(LifeSiteNews) — On September 20, NARAL Pro-Choice America announced that it is undergoing yet another rebranding — this time to “Reproductive Freedom for All.” America’s “oldest membership-based abortion rights group,” which has been fighting for unfettered feticide for 54 years, is embarking on this rebrand as an attempt to appeal to more Americans — especially as their values are out of step with the views of the majority. The name is new — the mission, abortion on demand throughout all nine months and funded by the government — is the same.
The organization was founded in February 1969, when 350 people from 21 sponsoring organizations gathered in Chicago for a conference titled “First National Conference on Abortion Laws: Modification or Repeal?” Their conclusion could be found in name of the new group: the National Association to Repeal Abortion Laws (NARAL). Among the founding members on the original planning committee were abortion activist Lawrence Lader, feminist leader Betty Friedan, and abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson.
Nathanson would later convert to the pro-life cause and write a series of books exposing NARAL’s deliberate lies — which included simply inventing fictious numbers of back-alley abortions and fabricating whatever evidence Lader and his colleagues felt would influence public opinion — such as The Hand of God, Aborting America, and The Abortion Papers. His film showing an abortion in progress, The Silent Scream, was screened in the Reagan White House and was the catalyst for the creation of pro-life organizations around the world.
In 2003, NARAL dropped its name (which had been largely rendered moot since Roe v. Wade has forcibly repealed abortion laws across the United States in 1973) in exchange for NARAL Pro-Choice America. The abortion wars were heating up and abortion activists were concerned. In 2008, former NARAL Pro-Choice America president Kate Michelman co-authored an editorial in the Los Angeles Times admitting that the more pro-life activists successfully shifted the focus from “choice” to what is being chosen, the more the American public’s views on the issue changed.
“Advocates of choice,” the editorial noted, “have had a hard time dealing with the increased visibility of the fetus.” Additionally, they noted, “In recent years the anti-abortion movement successfully put the nitty-gritty details of abortion on public display, increasing the belief that abortion is serious business and that some societal involvement is appropriate.” In 2013, with record numbers of Americans rejecting the “pro-choice” label, Planned Parenthood — the country’s largest abortion provider — decided to abandon the term “pro-choice” entirely in order to focus more specifically on the personal circumstances surrounding each abortion.
NARAL Pro-Choice America is making a similar decision with their new pivot. According to its website:
This change comes after a vote from our organization’s membership and after years of NARAL research and discussions with people in communities across the country found that people think of abortion rights and access as a matter of freedom. Our research has shown that reproductive freedom is a core value for people across the country — across religion, race, and age. With this change, our organization boldly forges ahead toward a future where reproductive freedom is a reality for everybody.
Over the course of our organization’s history, we have built and led powerful national and statewide efforts to flip legislatures and chambers, block abortion bans and restrictions, and expand abortion rights and access across the country. We have pioneered and deployed ground-breaking messaging on reproductive freedom, launched a first-of-its-kind opposition research program, helped lead a coalition in opposition to the confirmation of extremist Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and so much more.
The abortion industry has a decades-long record of identifying terms Americans treasure and attempting to associate abortion — the violent destruction of a human being developing in the womb — with that term. The term “pro-choice” was a brilliant rhetorical move at the time, because most people have a positive view of “choice.” Choice Americans love — the reality of what is being chosen is a different thing. The same is true with the use of the phrase “reproductive freedom.” Abortion has nothing to do with “reproductive freedom” — people are absolutely free to choose whether or not to have children.
What they are not — or should not — be free to do is kill a child once it already exists. Abortion is about what happens after reproduction already occurs.
