We at the IWF have no official position on abortion. We have both pro-life and pro-choice women on our board and staff, and we welcome both pro-life and pro-choice women who support our positions on what we believe constitutes authentic female autonomy: women’s right to choose how to structure their working and family lives lives free of pointless, expensive, intrusive, and condescending government programs.


Nonetheless, we can’t help but notice that the abortion-rights movement has turned itself into an arm of the loony left, particularly the nutty far-left demonization campaign against George. W. Bush and his entire administration. InkWell reader B.N. (thanks!) alerts us to The Crawford Wives, a nasty anti-Bush takeoff on The Stepford Wives put together by NARAL-Pro-Choice America, the abortion industry’s policy arm. (And since “The Crawford Wives” generously helps itself to stills aplenty from “The Stepford Wives,” I can’t help thinking that someone from Hollywood had a hand in manufacturing this choice bit of anti-Dubya propaganda.)


As might be expected, The Crawford Wives jeers at most women’s desire for a nice home and babies, equating those perfectly natural inclinations with robotic Stepford-esque mindlessness. Like hippies from the Sixties, the folks at NARAL deem life in the suburbs to be sooo plastic, man.


And who are the Crawford Wives, in NARAL’s view? First Lady Laura Bush (we expected that), Second Lady Lynne Cheney (ditto), former Bush adviser Karen Hughes (her sin was to quit her White House job so that she could spend more time with her 14-year-old son), National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (she’s not even married!), and columnist Ann Coulter (she’s not married, either, nor is she even connected with the Bush administration), and, finally, Katherine Harris, the former Florida attorney general who certified Bush as the winner of that state’s popular vote in that state and has since moved on to Congress.


I’d call the group a stellar collection of highly intelligent, independent-minded women who are living of examples that it’s possible to be both smart and conservative at the same time. All have shone in careers of their own: Laura’s a librarian, Condi’s a Stanford professor, Lynne has a doctorate in English literature from the University of Wisconsin, Ann’s a crackerjack lawyer (degree from the top-flight University of Michigan) as well as a best-selling writer, Katherine has proved herself to the Florida electorate, and Karen has demonstrated over and over that she’s a first-rate political strategist. But because none of these women has bought into the rad-feminist agenda, NARAL brands them as robots. Here’s what NARAL says:


“Laura, Karen, Ann, Lynne, Condi, Katherine – they’re successful professors, lawyers, librarians and novelists. They have minds of their own. Yet, they unquestioningly support President Bush even as he robs women of the right to make private decisions about their personal lives. Even worse, they’re masking Bush’s record of restricting women’s rights ‘ convincing women across the country to vote for Bush in November.”


If I were at NARAL, I’d start wondering why these women are so effective at “convincing women” that Bush should be their choice in November. Maybe it’s because NARAL and the rest of the left are the real Stepford faction, promoting the idea that every woman should be a cookie-cutter angry, Bush-bashing feminista like them.


By the way, at the Crawford Wives site, you can see an image of a NARAL-photoshopped poster of the Bush ladies, clad in colorful Stepford-style Lilly Pulitzer-esque frocks. They all look pretty darned good to me.