A member of the National Council of Women's Organizations, the NAF was a Co-Sponsoring Partner of the April 25, 2004 “March for Women’s Lives” held in Washington, D.C., a rally that drew more than a million demonstrators advocating that women be granted unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortions at any stage of pregnancy.

In addition to its pro-abortion advocacy, the NAF embraces a wide variety of leftwing agendas. For example, it is a member of the Fight the Right campaign of the National Organization for Women and the National Council of Women’s Organizations. This campaign actively supports not only unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion, but also race and gender preferences in business and education (which it terms “civil rights”), and increased spending on social welfare programs for women and children (which it terms “economic justice”). Fight the Right also supports the radical gay agenda (which demands that taxpayers bear the financial burden of the gay community’s AIDS scourge; which demonizes political scapegoats such as Ronald Reagan, whom it falsely and relentlessly accused of cutting funding for AIDS research and treatment, just as it demonizes religious institutions like the Catholic Church, which in fact oversees a vast spectrum of services and programs for AIDS-afflicted people; which seeks to redefine the family by encouraging homosexual marriages, not just civil unions – thereby suddenly transmogrifying one of humanity’s most ancient and revered institutions; which supports allowing homosexual couples to adopt children and become Scout troop leaders; and which tries to use corporate America as a springboard from which to launch a campaign for the wider acceptance of domestic partner benefits for their same-sex partners, in hopes that ultimately such policies will be adopted by federal, state, and local governments).

With regard to abortion specifically, the NAF’s views are outlined in its numerous publications, which include textbooks and email newsletters, and are also purveyed over a national, toll-free, bilingual “hotline.” Much of the content informing both the literature and the hotline is drawn from the organization’s “fact sheets,” which the NAF hails as sources of “unbiased information and referral services to women.” On its Web site, the NAF notes, “In a climate where misinformation about abortion is widespread, NAF’s publications provide medically accurate and unbiased information on surgical and medical abortion and quality assurance in abortion care.” Yet in fact, these publications promote misinformation designed to justify the NAF’s position on abortion-on-demand. Nowhere do they even attempt a balanced discussion of polling about abortion, much of which suggests that the American public has grown increasingly critical of practices like late-term, or “partial birth,” abortion. Instead, the NAF’s "fact sheets" misleadingly portray the debate over abortion as a clash between an overwhelmingly supportive public and a cabal of out-of-touch legislators with an anti-woman agenda: “National polling consistently shows that the majority of Americans support a woman’s right to choose, but many legislators are committed to bringing an end to legal abortion and have passed laws that have drastically diminished access to abortion.” Set unequivocally against parental consent and notification laws in abortion cases—hardly an unbiased position, whatever its merits—the NAF alleges that as a consequence of these laws, women have “resorted to illegal abortions rather than comply with a legal requirement that puts them in jeopardy.” The NAF offers neither a justification of this contentious claim, nor any statistics that might speak to its accuracy.

These fact sheets are not the only outlets for the NAF’s information. In 1999, as part of its campaign to “educate” the public about the wisdom of supporting of unrestricted abortion, the NAF launched an ad campaign on public transportation systems in major cities across the United States. Advocating, in no uncertain terms, greater public support for abortion, the ads noted that 43 percent of American women elect to undergo an abortion at some point in their lives. The underlying implication was that this statistic demonstrated the need for better quality abortion care, a position in unmistakable accordance with the NAF’s position on abortion.

That the NAF’s views on abortion are far from disinterested is further evidenced by the organization’s willingness to levy smear campaigns against those who do not share its commitment to abortion-on-demand. The NAF’s turbulent relationship with the Bush administration and former Attorney General John Ashcroft is a case in point. In January 2001 the NAF actively opposed John Ashcroft’s confirmation as Attorney General, launching a series of pointed attacks aimed at slandering the former senator as an “extremist”—a term that the NAF traditionally reserves for opponents of abortion. In one notably outrageous January 2001 press release, NAF executive director Vicki Saporta, a former organizing director with the Teamster’s Union, claimed that Ashcroft’s confirmation would usher in a wave of violence against abortion providers: “We fear an increase in the levels of violence directed against the dedicated health care professionals who provide safe, legal abortion services to women if Ashcroft becomes the next Attorney General,” Saporta wrote. Given these forecasted levels of violence, Saporta alleged that Ashcroft was too extreme for even those critical of abortion to endorse. “We urge all Americans, regardless of their position on a woman's right to choose, to oppose Ashcroft’s confirmation as Attorney General because his extremist views are out of touch with mainstream America and would interfere with his vigorous enforcement of the law,” stated Saporta’s press release.

However, in the wake of a series of anthrax threats which followed the September 11 attacks, including 500 that were mailed to abortion clinics and pro-abortion groups, the NAF underwent a temporary change of heart. Praising Ashcroft’s pledge to prosecute such crimes to the full extent of the law, Saporta paid tribute to the Attorney General’s role in cracking down on “anti-choice extremists,” a term of disapprobation that she had previously leveled at Ashcroft. “That Ashcroft characterized it [the wave of anthrax threats] as domestic terrorism, and the seriousness with which the FBI treated the matter, I believe, headed off copycat crimes,” Saporta said. In November of 2001, Saporta applauded Ashcroft for prosecuting one individual who sent out anthrax letters, Clayton Waagner, as a terrorist. “We commend the Attorney General for this important first step in designating anti-choice extremist Clayton Waagner as a domestic terrorist,” Saporta said.

The NAF’s approval of the Attorney General proved to be short-lived. When, in 2003, Congress passed a ban (which President Bush signed into law) on partial-birth abortion, the NAF once more turned against Ashcroft. Flanked by an alliance of leftwing groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAF filed a lawsuit against Ashcroft, under the title of National Abortion Federation v. Ashcroft, in a bid to invalidate the ban. As the NAF would later recall, “In November 2003, President Bush signed into federal law a dangerous bill that would have banned abortions as early as 13 weeks in pregnancy.” Yet this charge was patently misleading. In fact, the “Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003” banned abortion in only in those instances when “the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother,” indicating that the earliest point at which partial-birth abortions could take place was the 20^th week of pregnancy. The ban also clearly stipulated that it did “not apply to a partial-birth abortion that is necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.” Accurately representing this aspect of the law, however, did not rank high on Vicki Saporta’s list of priorities; her chief objective was to oppose any and all restrictions on abortion. In a flagrant misrepresentation, Saporta grimly claimed, “This law would force doctors to choose between exercising their best medical judgment or going to jail.” Still, not everyone associated with the NAF toed the organization’s line on partial-birth abortion. In an essay for Conscience, the in-house magazine of the pro-choice advocacy group Catholics for a Free Choice, NAF founder and former president Frances Kissling took issue with the NAF’s position on partial birth abortion. “I am deeply struck by the number of thoughtful, progressive people who have been turned off to the pro-choice movement by the lack of adequate and clear expressions of respect for fetal life,” Kissling wrote. Opponents of partial-birth abortion, Kissling further argued, “have felt forced to defend what appears to be an absolute right to abortion that brooks no consideration of other values — legal or moral. This often means a reluctance to even consider whether or not fetal life has value.”

For its part, the NAF has not only avoided any reconsideration of its rigid opposition to partial-birth abortion, but has refused to brook any restrictions on abortion. On occasion, the NAF has even challenged legislation that poses no overt threat to the practice. For years, the NAF, in league with its other pro-abortion-on-demand groups such as the ACLU, NARAL, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, has laboriously opposed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, a law that would recognize as victims unborn children killed during the commission of a federal or military crime. With an eye toward projecting a moderate image, the NAF has described its activism under the banner of “pro-choice.” Privately, however, the NAF acknowledges that this is little more than a byword for abortion-on-demand. On its Web site, the organization boasts that as a result of its efforts, “more than 200,000 American women have safely exercised their ability to choose quality medical abortion care since 2000.”

At least some of the credit for the proliferation of abortion providers can be attributed to the NAF. As a representative of a vast spectrum of abortion practitioners—including physicians, nurses, counselors, administrators, and other health care professionals—the NAF has a direct interest in promoting an increase in the number of facilities that perform abortions. Hence, in addition to lobbying against restrictions on abortion, the NAF has also sought to recruit a base of medical professionals to take up its cause. In 1993 the NAF spun off the group Medical Students for Choice (MSFC). A network of some 7,000 activists, MSFC amplifies the NAF’s longtime claim that there is shortage of abortion providers—a claim that, not incidentally, stands to benefit the work of the organization’s members—and works “to persuade medical schools to include abortion as a part of the reproductive health services curriculum.” In 1997 the NAF inaugurated three other groups—Midwives for Choice, Nurse Practitioners for Choice, and Physician Assistant for Choice—to promote its demands for increased access to abortion. Allied under the umbrella organization Clinicians for Choice, these groups today boast a total membership of about 6,000.

Yet another tactic used by the NAF to promote its calls for more abortion facilities is its sponsorship of national symposia. As of this writing (December 2004), the NAF has held four such symposia since 1990, using those occasions to call attention to what it characterizes as a shortage of abortion providers, and to urge an increase of abortion facilities in minority neighborhoods. Immune to the irony of the formulation, the NAF maintains that abortion is an “integral part of reproductive health care.”

In addition to seeding groups supportive of its mission, the NAF has also forged alliances with other leftwing organizations. Working in partnership with the Open Society Institute (a New-York-based grant-making foundation established by financier George Soros) and Ipas (an organization that promotes access to abortion in developing countries), the NAF has campaigned for the introduction of first-trimester abortion (performed via a method called Manual Vacuum Aspiration) in the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, as well as the republics of the former Soviet Union. To date, the NAF has conducted training sessions on abortion in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia; Moldova; Macedonia; Albania; Kyrgyzstan; and Georgia. Within the United States, leftwing groups regularly provide a forum for NAF representatives to promote their agendas. In March 2003, for instance, Dr. Eric Shaff, chair of the National Abortion Federation, participated in a conference on abortion organized by Amnesty International.

The NAF is well financed by a number of wealthy foundations. In 2001, for example, $6,319,286 of its $7,429,115 total income was provided by foundation grants. That same year, NAF president Vicki Saporta took home a salary of $195,278. Among other recent benefactors of the NAF are the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the Turner Foundation. Moreover, NAF supporters seldom fail to rally in support of the organization’s initiatives. In 2002, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation footed much of the expense for a $2 million NAF advertising campaign highlighting the advent of RU 486, known in popular parlance as the abortion pill. To the benefit of the NAF’s operational budget, this sponsorship has continued unabated ever since. In 2003, the NAF was the recipient of a $100,000 John Merck Fund grant to support the NAF’s aim of expanding the number of abortion facilities and recruiting larger numbers of medical practitioners into performing abortions. The NAF arrogates much of the credit for its fiscal potency to the leadership of Vicki Saporta. Since assuming the organization’s presidency in 1995, Saporta has tripled the NAF’s budget, staff and programs.