So I lied: whatever happened to the abortion lobbyist who repented? - Ron Fitzgerald, head of National Coalition of Abortion Providers, and the partial birth abortion issue - Interview

Progressive, The, Sept, 1997 by Melanie Conklin

Merle Hoffman remembers the shock she felt when she picked up her New York Times on the morning of February 26 and saw the headline: An Abortion Rights Advocate Says He Lied About Procedure.

"I said to myself, `Who could they be talking about but Ron Fitzsimmons?'" recalls Hoffman, who runs CHOICES Women's Medical Center in Queens, New York. "I was, needless to say, shocked, amazed, and terribly, terribly distressed."

Most people, at least outside the Beltway, don't recognize the name Ron Fitzsimmons -- that is, until you put it together with the loaded words "partial-birth abortion" and the phrase, "I lied through my teeth."

This quote not only brought Fitzsimmons more than his fifteen minutes of fame, it has tarred the credibility of pro-choice advocates. His comment implied that all of them had been deliberately dishonest about the frequency and reasons that procedures like intact dilation and extraction -- the medical terminology for what pro-lifers call "partial-birth abortions" -- are performed.

Fitzsimmons is still the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers (NCAP), though he has assumed a low profile ever since his remark became headline news.

After Fitzsimmons's recantation, anti-abortion activists reacted with glee, repeating his comments ad nauseam. The House revisited and approved the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act by an even larger veto-proof majority than it had the previous year. Some Representatives cited Fitzsimmons's comment that the procedure is used on healthy fetuses as the justification for their changed votes. And it gave some normally pro-choice Democratic Senators, such as Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, and Tom Daschle of South Dakota, grounds to vote for legislation that intervenes in the doctor-patient relationship and a woman's right to choose. Senator Daschle even introduced his own bill to ban all post-viability abortions, except to save the mother's life or prevent grievous physical harm. The Daschle bill failed, but it did receive votes from such otherwise progressive senators as Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and Tom Harkin of Iowa.

Some of Fitzsimmons's colleagues blame him for turning the tide against choice. "He called me in tears the day after that statement came out," remembers Hoffman. "My question to him then, as it remains, was, `When are you resigning?'"

Hoffman thinks Fitzsimmons did irreparable harm to the movement. "The most awful thing about it is it appeared to validate everything the antis have said about the abortion providers, which is that we lie," says Hoffman. "This is not a lobbying thing. This is not a political game. This is about women's lives. People have been killed; people have been shot; I've had death threats. How dare he, for whatever his personal agenda items were, say something so egregious? He should have resigned immediately."

Yet some of the directors of clinics he represents say there is an up side to his comment: a new forthrightness to the abortion debate.

"My personal opinion about Ron Fitzsimmons is that he's done more for independent providers than any other person," says Sally Burgess, who runs Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City, Illinois. "His intent was sincere. He was trying to do something helpful. While I do think Ron's statement helped the anti-choice legislation gather momentum, the good part is that it helped bring the pre-viability and post-viability issue into clearer focus. And I've heard from colleagues who say it made the whole debate more honest."

Fitzsimmons is not apologetic.

"I was just putting out the facts as I knew them," he says. "I think the debate in Congress should be based on as many facts as possible. Our clinics have nothing to hide, and our doctors have nothing to apologize for. I believe I did the right thing."

Ron Fitzsimmons was never a player in the late-term abortion debate. He confirms that, while he opposed the bill, he never lobbied on it or spoke publicly about it until this spring, except in the one Nightline interview where he now says he lied. (Ironically, in that 1995 episode, Nightline never aired his lie.)

That's one reason why pro-choice advocates were shocked to see the media anoint him a prominent expert on the issue in the wake of his bombshell quote. "He's a Washington hustler," says Dr. Liz Karlin, who runs an abortion clinic in Madison, Wisconsin, and left NCAP several years ago. She adds with a laugh: "I would love to know why newspapers put it on page one that a lobbyist says he lied."

Fitzsimmons is the first to admit that he's a lobbyist -- and a good one. He proudly recalls being named one of the top fifty hired guns in D.C. by Washingtonian magazine in 1992. Previously he lobbied for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), and was working for a private firm, when a handful of independent providers approached him in 1990 to represent them.

"I started NCAP by racking up about $15,000 on my credit card to travel around to clinics and convince people to get involved because the independent providers needed a voice," recalls the forty-seven-year-old Fitzsimmons.