Special Blog Post: An Open Letter to NARAL Pro-Choice America

To the President of NARAL Pro-Choice America:

According to the Endorsed Candidates Webpage of NARAL Pro-Choice America, your organization has endorsed incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman for the United States Senate in his race against challenger Ned Lamont for the Democratic nomination in Connecticut. Although I shall not make a counter-endorsement here principally because I have yet to determine to my own satisfaction the qualifications of Mr. Lamont to serve as a United States Senator, I must criticize your decision to endorse of Mr. Lieberman, given the mission of your organization.

According to a post at Pam's House Blend, NARAL Pro-Choice America has stated, "[Mr. Lieberman] since clarified his position, to our satisfaction" with respect to several matters, including his vote for cloture to prevent a filibuster of the Senate vote on the appointment of Judge Samuel Alito as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and his support of hospitals that refuse to provide morning-after contraception to rape victims.

Although such may exist and be widely known, I can find precious little reference in the way of clarifications that Mr. Lieberman is supposed to have made on the aforementioned matters; however, whether or not Mr. Lieberman made such clarifications—and in particular, whether or not he made them to representatives of NARAL Pro-Choice America—is irrelevant.

In the case of the Alito nomination, any statement he would have made after his vote is moot: he cast his vote, he did so with full knowledge of the opposition of his constituent base, and the consequence of his vote is that a jurist with radical views far outside the mainstream of public opinion and judicial review now sits on the bench of the highest court in the land, able as he now is to affect the political, social, and economic landscape of this nation for generations to come. As I made clear in a letter I sent to the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, and which I republished here, the vote on Samuel Alito was a defining moment not just for America, but for the United States Senators in office at that momentous occasion.

Many if not most votes that a Senator makes can be mitigated, at least to some extent, after the fact. A Senator can come to understand the error in judgment or can seek to create a political smokescreen by approving in principle but not in subsequent funding some piece of legislation. Even in a matter as grave as authorizing military action against Iraq, a Senator can diminish the shameful fact of his or her favorable vote in subsequent condemnation of the war and the lies that led to the catastrophically wrongful vote. This is not to say that a Senator should be forgiven for the initial vote; but retrospective and introspective contrition can be demonstrated by forthright and firm resolve in subsequent votes on the matter.

Such is not the case with a Senator's vote to end a filibuster on a radical Supreme Court nominee. Nothing can be done to repair the damage of the action, and no amount of "clarification" will alter the trajectory of American jurisprudence at its highest level arising from such a damnable act. That you believe Mr. Lieberman can somehow repair the wide-ranging, inter-generational consequences of his cowardice belies a fundamental lack of understanding of just how grave, decisive, and permanent Mr. Lieberman's vote was on that melancholy day of January 30, 2006.

Now, concerning Mr. Lieberman's statement about "conscience" rights of medical service providers, he demonstrated a fundamental blindness to the essential and foundational nature of objectivity in the dispensation of the results of science. Mr. Lieberman does not grasp that public policy cannot be formed on the parochial interests of a handful of common carriers of medications and procedures; in fact, public policy must stand firm against any and all selective medical care delivery, and it must do so precisely because the individual seeking care is asymmetrically at permanent disadvantage in relationships with doctors, hospitals, and even to some extent pharmacies. This is the nature of what is called "fiduciary duty," which is robust to sentiments, opinions, and provincial judgments of those accepting such duty.

If Mr. Lieberman spoke to NARAL Pro-Choice America officials and satisfied their concerns, that's all well and good; but NARAL Pro-Choice America is not the gatekeeper to public trust. Private citizens render judgments with the advice—which we hope is sound—of other individuals, private organizations, and public entities and their responsible representatives. However, no such body external to the individual has any business attempting to secure the trust of information consumers by simply stating that it has received in confidence information to which its constituents are not a party.

NARAL Pro-Choice America might be satisfied, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not I am, and NARAL Pro-Choice America diminishes itself markedly by anticipating otherwise. More importantly, NARAL Pro-Choice America calls into wide-ranging question the judgment in more fundamental assertions, representations, and statements it makes if it is of such a mind that it can in secret discuss matters affecting others' lives in the absence of persistent and thorough transparency.

Your endorsement of Mr. Lieberman renders evidence that NARAL Pro-Choice America is nothing more than a consummate Washington insider, an organization that finds quarter wholly and without concern in its configuration and closeness to the power structure within the Beltway. In the 21st Century, progressive causes will not be won there: what little remains salvageable in this degraded era will be won in street-level political operations arising from the grassroots, a territory NARAL Pro-Choice America has not visited in a long time, standing as it has on press releases the mainstream media barely notices, lobbying that has not prevented the erosion of a woman's right to choose, and the altogether useless mantra that "It's the law of the land—end of discussion" that now proves to have been a bureaucratic apology that became a death trap for the pro-choice forces.

The fight for privacy rights moves on into the grim, year-by-year, election-by-election, vote-by-vote battles across the land. The fight moves on, and it moves on past NARAL Pro-Choice America.



The Dark Wraith has spoken.