Washington -- National Right to Life has told its Cleveland affiliate that it may no longer be called, well, an affiliate. It's because Cleveland Right to Life expanded its mission statement and formally took a stand against gay marriage after a loyal national-movement friend and ardent abortion foe, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, changed his position on gay marriage.

“Why they would do it, except that they are getting pressured from Sen. Portman, is the only thing that we can surmise,” Cleveland Right to Life president Molly Smith told us this morning.

National Right to Life, however, suggests it just wants to stick to fighting abortion. Fighting gay marriage is not its concern. And actively criticizing a senator over gay marriage, when the senator has staunchly opposed abortion, factored into the excommunication decision.

"Recently, Cleveland Right to Life announced that is has embraced an advocacy agenda that includes issues beyond the right to life," Carol Tobias, the national president, wrote in a July 17 letter to Cleveland Right to Life president Smith. "Moreover, it promptly issued public criticisms of and implicit political threats against a U.S. senator who has supported the right-to-life position on every vote that has come before the Senate, and who is a sponsor of major NRLC-backed bills -- because the chapter disagrees with his position on a non-right-to-life issue.

“By these actions,” the national letter said, “Cleveland Right to Life has violated National Right to Life policy, causing the chapter to disaffiliate itself from the NRLC.

“We respectfully insist that you remove from your website the claim that you are affiliated with NRLC, and from this point forward, cease and desist from any representation that ‘Cleveland Right to Life’ is affiliated with the National Right to Life Committee.”

This does not mean that Cleveland Right to Life has been dropped in the anti-abortion wilderness. Officials from the Cleveland, Cincinnati and Ohio right-to-life organizations told us this morning that local chapters never even apply to be part of the national group. Rather, each local chapter establishes itself under IRS nonprofit rules and affiliates with the state umbrella chapter.

In turn, the head of each state chapter has a seat on the national board, essentially representing the anti-abortion movement in each state. But a local chapter can maintain its own mission without even belonging to the state chapter if it so wishes.

“We’re still in good standing with the state,” Smith, of the Cleveland group, said.

Ohio Right to Life president Mike Gonidakis confirms this.

As for the national affiliation, Smith said, “They’ve disaffiliated a group that was never affiliated, so for us it’s a little baffling.”

Although Smith has criticized Portman over gay marriage, she said she has been told that Portman’s office had nothing to do with the national group’s decision. She said she is skeptical of that, since the national letter specifically discusses her group’s criticism of Portman.

In a news release issued on her group's website Monday, Smith said there appeared to be communication between Portman's office and National Right to Life before the Cleveland affiliate was even notified of the decision.

"This letter” from the national group, “which was received well after the date on the letter, came without even a phone call or email from the NRTL organization", Smith said in the news release. "In fact, we have become aware that copies of the letter were forwarded to Ohio prolife organizations from Senator Portman's office before I had the opportunity to read it myself."

Cleveland Right to Life “can only surmise from these facts that there was significant coordination between NRTL and Senator Portman's office on this and that the senator asked for NRTL to take this action against one of the most active and effective local prolife organizations in the country,” the news release said.

Smith also says she does not believe the two issues -- abortion and support for traditional families -- should be separated.

“How can you be for the child if you are not for the family?” she said in a phone interview with The Plain Dealer this morning.

Jerry C. Cirino, a Cleveland board member, elaborated on this on the news release. "We know it is not only important to protect the rights of a child to be born...we should also care about the child after they are born," he said. "This is about supporting the family in America and any politician, including Portman, who supports the breakup of the American family and supports the denial of a mother and father for children, has forfeited the right of support and endorsement of the pro-life movement.”

A Portman aide said that neither the senator nor his staff were involved in the disaffiliation letter. The aide said the national organization apparently wanted to protect its focused mission on abortion and not get sidetracked on other issues.

Don’t look for Cleveland Right to Life to mute its message just because of this split. Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati, a granddaddy of the movement, has had an on-again, off-again relationship with the national organization as well. The most recent split came several years ago when the Cincinnati group decided to support “personhood” proposals -- to declare a fetus a person with full legal rights -- in Colorado and North Dakota.

The national umbrella organization was unhappy with that “because it was not one of their issues,” said Paula Westwood, executive director of the Cincinnati group. So the Cincinnati chapter dropped its formal ties.

The Cincinnati experience gets at the heart of a fundamental matter. The state and national umbrella groups tend to support incremental legislation they believe they can win to chip away at abortion rights established in Roe v. Wade. They tend to oppose big, bold approaches that might make a statement but, from a legal perspective, stand to lose when challenged in the courts. They say such efforts can detract from the mission.

The Cincinnati chapter wants to push both approaches.

That also explains its difference with the state group over proposed human-heartbeat bills, which would outlaw abortion if a heartbeat could be detected in a fetus, in Columbus. The state chapter does not believe such a law would withstand a constitutional challenge and could even harm other anti-abortion efforts.

Yet the state group and the Cincinnati chapter work together regularly on other issues.

“Even though Cincinnati Right to Life is a free agent, for lack of a better term, we still work with them,” Gonidakis said. “I talk with Paula Westwood, the executive director of Cincinnati Right to Life, three or four times a month.”

He expects the same kind of relationship with Cleveland Right to Life, a group that he considers especially important because, he said, the Cleveland area leads the state in abortions.

“Cleveland Right to Life is a dear friend of ours.” and that’s not changing, Gonidakis said.

He added that the spat with the national organization "is overblown. The fact of the matter is (that) there are differences like this" in any movement. "It's like Save the Whales, PETA -- even if you talk with the gay community, there are differences of whether to go on the ballot next year" with an amendment to overturn Ohio's ban or to wait.

In any movement, Gonidakis said, there are “always differences of tactics and strategies.”