WASHINGTON - An abortion rights group is withdrawing a heavily criticized television ad that linked John Roberts to violent anti-abortion activists, saying its attempt to illuminate the Supreme Court nominee's record has been "misconstrued."

After protests by conservatives, NARAL Pro-Choice America said Thursday night it would pull the ad that began running this week.

"We regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts' record," NARAL President Nancy Keenan said.

"Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public," she said in a letter Thursday to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who earlier in the day had urged the group to withdraw the ad.

Specter, himself an abortion-rights supporter as well as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that will question Roberts next month, said the ad was "blatantly untrue and unfair."

The NARAL ad criticized Roberts and linked him with violent anti-abortion protesters because of the anti-abortion briefs he worked on as a government lawyer in 1991.

Right. NARAL is pulling the ad because we're all too stupid to understand what they meant. It didn't have anything to do, of course, with the wildly misleading nature of the ad itself.

I posted previously about this ad here. That post also received some comments from Jeff Lyons, the husband of Emily Lyons who appears in the commercial itself.