However, NARAL's whopper of a strategical error didn't just imperil the group's own mission, but the position of other pro-choice advocates and women's groups. Tripping over themselves to criticize NARAL, moderates and progressives who were perhaps frustrated with the tactics of reproductive rights groups in general now had an excuse and an opportunity to vent their spleen.

In the Times, columnist John Tierney wrote a piece titled "Pro-Choice but Anti-Naral," in which he railed against the organization's commitment to making abortion a civil rights issue. "The tactic makes for displays of solidarity like the March for Women's Lives, an occasion for denouncing male anti-abortion politicians and waving signs with that perennial slogan 'If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament,'" he wrote. It was clear that Tierney was not simply angry about the ad, but about his perceptions of the women's rights movement as loud and emasculating; he painted them as damaging the greater good.

Nowhere was the desire to kick NARAL and its sisters while they were down clearer than on the increasingly heated, and male dominated, political blogosphere, where popular lefty blogger DailyKos used the ad dust-up as an excuse to vent his larger frustrations with NARAL for endorsing politicians solely because of their stands on abortion rights. "Until NARAL (and the rest of the single-issue groups) understand that building a movement is more beneficial to their causes than singular devotion to their pet causes, I can't take them seriously," he wrote on Aug. 9, the day after NARAL released its ad.

Referring to reproductive rights as a "single issue" and a "pet cause" did not go over well with some of Kos' peers, including Jessica Valenti of Feministing. "I think that that attitude about reproductive rights groups has been the case for a long time," Valenti said by phone. "You would think they would feel shameful of being completely flat-out dismissive of women's rights, but they have no shame." Valenti said she was depressed about the rancor toward women's issues she felt coming from the broader left. "You feel like at the end of the day these [fellow progressives] are on your side at least. Then it turns out at the end of the day they're going to be like, 'Oh, fuck abortion.'"

Reached for comment about his remarks, Kos' Markos Moulitsas Zuniga was clear that he never weighed in on the ad itself. His beef with what he calls "single-issue groups" like NARAL is "with the insistence that their issue be ... the most important issue on the face of the planet. That is what's killing us." Moulitsas, who said that he'd completed a chapter on the pro-choice movement for his upcoming book the night before, professed not to have much of an opinion about the NARAL ad and its aftermath. "I saw the whole controversy about it but I never paid much attention," he said, adding that "whether [the ad] was truthful or not, that's something NARAL has every right to be doing. Its mission is to protect abortion rights and the Supreme Court is the front line." But he said that mostly, the kerfuffle had provided him with "a segue into my other rant."

That was precisely the problem. In taking such a major fall, NARAL had revealed a weak spot that could be exploited by opponents and critics from every edge of the political spectrum. "Coming out against NARAL so strongly was completely out of hand," said Amanda Marcotte, a blogger from Austin, Texas, who maintains the Pandagon site. "It spoke to me of a certain willingness on the part of certain so-called moderate liberals, left of center, all men, their willingness to throw out women's rights if they could win an election by doing that. They'd use the word 'compromise,' of course."

Afraid that reporters would ask them about the touchy subject of the ad, movement leaders seemed reluctant to keep up their high-volume questions about Roberts. And the unspoken message coming from the critical left was that women should stifle it for a while. "It put a damper on the debate," said Kissling.

PPFA's Pearl saw things differently. "I didn't see that as a period of enforced silence so much as the beginning of the August recess," she said. "We never ever felt any pressure to be quiet and we haven't been."

Michelman, meanwhile, agreed with Kissling, and conceded that the public whomping of her former organization had caused "a little slowdown" in the public conversation about Roberts. "But that was not a bad thing," she added. "At that moment, we needed to clear the air a little. And I think that's exactly what happened." She also pointed out that the lull "didn't last long. The information coming out now is vital. The process is unfolding in a careful way and it's very important that we don't slow that process down now."

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