Sometimes even abortion lobbyists show a degree of uneasiness about what it is they are lobbying for. At the end of 1993 Kate Michelman, the head of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, was interviewed by the Philadelphia Inquirer about NARAL’s new emphasis on the prevention of teen pregnancies. The reporter quoted Michelman as saying, “We think abortion is a bad thing.” Michelman complained that she had been misquoted, whereupon she was reminded that the interview had been taped. Nevertheless, NARAL issued a statement a few days later declaring that Michelman “has never said–and would never say–that ‘abortion is a bad thing.'” Michelman, who had reason to know better, sought only to “clarify” her remark in a letter to the Inquirer. “It is not abortion itself that is a bad thing,” she wrote. “Rather, our nation’s high rate of abortion represents a failure” of our system of sex education, contraception, and health care. But a month later Michelman herself, testifying before a House subcommittee on energy and commerce, insisted that “the reporter absolutely quoted me incorrectly,” and she later told a Washington Post reporter, “I would never, never, never, never, never mean to say such a thing.” Not until the Post reporter showed her the transcript did Michelman finally acknowledge–somewhat evasively –that she had said it: “I’m obviously guilty of saying something that led her to put that comment in there.”
George Mckenna, “On Abortion: A Lincolnian Position,” The Atlantic Monthly Sept. 1995
