At her press conference Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi said that she “never supported” the idea of abortion on demand. | AP Photo NARAL dings Pelosi on abortion rhetoric

NARAL Pro-Choice America is going after longtime ally Nancy Pelosi for using rhetoric that it says is more line with opponents of abortion than its supporters.

“I don’t believe in abortion on demand,” Pelosi said in an interview with Roll Call. “I sometimes wonder if the Republican men who are here even know what’s going on in their own families, because the fact is that contraception and birth control is something that is used — I don’t believe that abortion is a form of birth control or contraception — and if you want to diminish the number of abortions in our country, you should love contraception, but they don’t.”

NARAL said in a statement that Pelosi’s remarks are “particularly disappointing and ill-advised” and fall “well short” of its standards.


Pelosi said that she doesn’t believe in “abortion on demand” or that “abortion is a form of birth control” — two phases that abortion foes typically use to characterize abortion-rights supporters. NARAL objected to Pelosi merely repeating those phrases, even if she said she doesn’t agree with them.

“The Leader should stop using twisted GOP talking points about abortion and birth control,” NARAL senior vice president for campaigns and strategy Sasha Bruce said. “We don't know women who demand abortion or use abortion as birth control. We do know women who make thoughtful decisions about how and if they want to start a family, and who need access to all reproductive-health care services, including abortion. We’re confident the Leader does too, which makes her comments all the more troubling.”

At her press conference Wednesday, Pelosi said that she “never supported” the idea of abortion on demand.

“Inside and outside the Congress we should all be working together to make sure that woman have the right to make their own decisions” about the size and timing of their families, she said.

Pelosi spokeswoman Evangeline George said, “there has been no stronger champion for Roe v. Wade and women's health in Congress than Leader Nancy Pelosi. With women's health and reproductive choice under full assault from a Republican House and Senate, we must all focus on the serious efforts underway to undermine a woman’s right to make her own health decisions."

In the Roll Call interview, Pelosi bashed the House Republicans’ attempts to defund Planned Parenthood as an “insult to the intelligence and judgment of women,” and that health care decisions should be between a woman and her doctor.

Pelosi ally Rep. Jan Schakowsky defended the minority leader as well. “There is no one who has been a stronger champion of a woman’s right to choose and to make her own health care decisions than Nancy Pelosi," she said in a statement to POLITICO.

The comments come shortly after Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz ruffled feathers among abortion-rights supporters when she told The New York Times Magazine that she sees a “complacency” among young women who have grown up after Roe v. Wade was decided.

This article tagged under: Nancy Pelosi