By Stephanie Simon, Staff Writer
The Los Angeles Times
6:40 PM PDT, June 5, 2007

As they gathered Tuesday for a national strategy session, anti-abortion
activists faced an unexpected revolt in their own ranks.

Some of the biggest groups in the movement, including Focus on the Family
and National Right to Life, are under attack from fellow activists who
accuse them of turning the cause into a money-grubbing industry.

Those groups have raised tens of millions of dollars and trumpeted victory
after incremental victory in the 34 years since Roe v. Wade legalized
abortions. But nearly a quarter of all pregnancies in the U.S. still end in
abortion. Deeply frustrated, several small anti-abortion groups have
launched a campaign to force their movement to an absolutist position: no
more compromises, no more half-steps, just an all-out effort for an all-out
ban.

They are making their position clear in full-page ads that will run in
conservative publications over the next few months. They are urging donors
to stop contributing to anti-abortion groups that focus on making it more
difficult -- but not impossible -- for women to obtain abortions.

"The broader movement is claiming that we're saving lives, and we're not,"
said Brian Rohrbough, one of the dissident activists. "It can't get any
worse than that."

Tension between the incremental and absolutist camps has existed in the
anti-abortion movement from the beginning. It's bursting into the open now
in part because of the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Partial Birth
Abortion Ban.

In April, the justices upheld a federal law banning a rare mid-term
procedure that involves partly delivering a live fetus, then crushing its
skull. The ruling was striking for several reasons. For the first time, the
Supreme Court approved a restriction on abortion that contained no
exceptions, not even for the health of the woman. And the justices adopted
anti-abortion rhetoric in key portions of the majority opinion.

However, the ruling also explicitly endorsed other methods of abortion; at
one point, the justices explained that doctors could avoid prosecution by
killing the fetus with a lethal injection in the womb before suctioning out
its brain.

To Rohrbough, president of Colorado Right to Life, that decision was nothing
short of evil -- an endorsement of murder. He was appalled that his fellow
activists not only claimed the ruling as a victory but also used it as a
fundraising tool, appealing to donors for more money to keep the momentum
going.

"We've been promised for almost 40 years that the strategy of electing
Republicans would get us a Republican Supreme Court that would end abortion,
and that has not happened," Rohrbough said. "If we raise money to do the
same thing over and over again ... we will never, ever establish personhood
for all (unborn) children."

The partial-birth ruling "gives us the most powerful example we've ever had
of how morally bankrupt this strategy is," added the Rev. Bob Enyart, the
pastor of Denver Bible Church.

Enyart and Rohrbough wrote a long public letter of rebuke to James Dobson,
founder of Focus on the Family, and other anti-abortion activists who
applauded the Supreme Court decision.

That letter was then turned into ads that have run in the Washington Times
and in Dobson's hometown paper, the Colorado Springs Gazette, and will
appear soon in other publications, Enyart said.

The anti-abortion absolutists have far less clout than the more established
groups that met this week in Washington, D.C., to plan their next legal and
legislative moves. But they have a few big names backing them, including
former Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes and activist Judie Brown
of the American Life League. Several pastors, Christian radio hosts and
bloggers are in their camp.

"We're not finding any core, mainstream (anti-abortion) groups that are
anything other than political hacks. ... You don't even hear these guys
talking about ending abortion any more. So you'll see our rhetoric
sharpening," said David Brownlow, who runs a lobbying group in Oregon called
Life Support.

Abortion-rights advocates view the splintering with some alarm: "It may mean
we're fighting on more fronts," said Janet Crepps, senior staff attorney at
the Center for Reproductive Rights.

But there's also a measure of satisfaction on the left. "Whenever your
opponents squabble among themselves, it's a good thing," said Cecile
Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

The rift has begun to play out in the political arena.

This spring, South Dakota's Legislature considered new restrictions on
abortion after voters rejected a ban that contained no exceptions for
victims of rape or incest.

Republican State Sen. Jason Gant argued for a ban with narrow exceptions, to
appease voters who had been queasy about the earlier approach. "When you can
stop 90 percent of abortions, that's pretty good. We can try again at a
later date to get the other 10 percent," Gant said.

But the state's Right to Life group opposed the exceptions, arguing that
"babies conceived of rape and incest deserve to live, too," said Lena Jones,
the organization's office manager.

The deadlock killed the ban before it came to a vote in the Senate.

Daniel McConchie, a top anti-abortion strategist and vice president of
Americans United for Life, said the internal feuding could tarnish his
movement's image a bit: "It can have some negative backlash." But he does
not expect any falloff in fundraising.

In general, organizations committed to an incremental strategy take in far
more money than the absolutist groups. Rohrbough's group runs on a budget of
about $150,000 a year. By contrast, the National Right to Life Committee
raised more than $9.7 million last year, according to IRS filings. Americans
United for Life raised $1.9 million.

At the daylong meeting Tuesday, academics, Supreme Court experts, lawyers
and strategists from conservative lobbying groups such as Concerned Women
for America laid plans for their next offensive -- one that builds on the
incremental approach. Their goal is to reduce the number of abortions,
estimated at 1.3 million a year by the Guttmacher Institute, a research
organization affiliated with Planned Parenthood.

"We're looking at a whole gamut of ideas," McConchie said. "We're very
confident we'll be able to pursue the next stages without a huge amount of
dissention."

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