During Monday's press conference to unveil the ad, NARAL President Nancy Keenan said, "I want to be very clear that we are not suggesting that Mr. Roberts condones or supports clinic violence. I know he said he finds bombing and murder abhorrent, but still, his ideological views of the law compelled him to go out of his way to argue in support of someone like Michael Bray who had already been convicted of a string of bombings."

But later in the press conference, Keenan was pressed by reporters to explain why, if she said NARAL was not "suggesting" that "Roberts condones or supports clinic violence," the ad says that Roberts' "ideology leads him to excuse violence."

Keenan was asked, "Aren't "condone" and "excuse" the same thing?"

She responded, "I think there's a difference with the...the brief that he filed was purely discretionary. And I think that is why when he, as the government, came in and he, as a political appointee, as deputy Solicitor General, said that the law did not cover as a civil rights law that protects those of us as Americans, that it did not cover the violence, or the groups in protecting women's lives in these clinics. So again, this was a way that he proactively ...proactively ...went and supported these groups that were perpetrating violence against women's clinics."

Keenan was pressed again, "So does he condone clinic violence or does he not?"

Her response, "Again, I don't think he does condone clinic violence. We are not saying that..."

Keenan was interrupted with another question, "but you say he excuses it."

And her answer: "He sided with groups that supported clinic violence. He sided...the government did not have to file in amicus. They could have stood down on that issue, and they did not. He, in that leadership role, decided to file that amicus brief as a friend of the court to say that these groups had a right to be outside of these clinics and protest as they were doing."

Excerpt from today's NY Times story revealing public spat among pro-aborts over NARAL ad:

Within the larger liberal coalition of which Naral is a part, there was considerable uneasiness about the advertisement.... Frances Kissling, the longtime president of Catholics for a Free Choice, said she was "deeply upset and offended" by the advertisement, which she called "far too intemperate and far too personal."

Ms. Kissling, who initiated the conversation with a reporter, said the ad "does step over the line into the kind of personal character attack we shouldn't be engaging in."

She added: "As a pro-choice person, I don't like being placed on the defensive by my leaders. Naral should pull it and move on."

Walter Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration and longtime Naral supporter, sent a letter on Wednesday to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and its ranking Democrat, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, respectively. Mr. Dellinger said he had disagreed with Mr. Roberts's argument in the Bray case but considered it unfair to give "the impression that Roberts is somehow associated with clinic bombers." He added that "it would be regrettable if the only refutation of these assertions about Roberts came from groups opposed to abortion rights."