The Commercialization Of Abortion

The United Kingdom aired its very first TV abortion ad on May 24 at ten past ten.

To some this sheds light on a issue obscured with dark shame and to others it is an ad for murder.

Both sides dutifully hop onto the chess board and take their predictable places in black or white. Free will moves forward and is blocked by right to life. Control over our bodies is countered by worries over genocide.

You have probably already picked your team and know where you stand.

I’m going to ask you to step off the board and forget your marching orders, because you can defend the right to abortion without wanting it advertised.

The commercial has already produced over 370 complaints despite the fact that it does not mention the word abortion once.

It shows a series of women who are “late,” presumably with their periods. At the end it asks “Are you late?” and provides contact information for Marie Stopes.

This ad is the gentlest of soft sell.

Marie Stopes said that the ad is necessary because only 42 percent of adults in the UK know where they can go for abortion advice, aside from their family doctor.

First of all, there is nothing wrong from a family doctor being the first port of call. It is their job to treat what they can and guide patients to experts when they cannot. And I doubt 42 percent of adults know where to find an oncologist.

Secondly, if you type in “abortion UK” Marie Stopes is the first site that comes up, and I don’t even live in Europe. They can hardly argue that they are hard to find.

“We hope the new ‘Are you late?’ campaign will encourage people to talk about abortion more openly and honestly, and empower women to make confident, informed choices about their sexual health,” said the organization’s CEO, Dana Hovig. But it is dishonest to recast this as a PSA because no matter how well intentioned it is, this is still an attempt to get people to purchase what they are selling — namely abortion.

Now abortion is an important service to provide, and women should have access to it. My concern is with the marketing of a life-changing decision.

I despise sneaky pro-life organizations who offer pregnancy tests and counseling to lure in terrified women who have just discovered they are pregnant only to confuse them with inaccurate facts and shame them into keeping the child. The decision to have a baby or to terminate a pregnancy is a life-changing one that should be made without pressure or coercion.

But advertisements are designed to do just that. Everything in them is engineered to manufacture the desired emotional response. Millions of dollars of research are devoted to learning how to manipulate your brain and influence your decisions in ways that you don’t even notice.

That is hardly the ideal environment for people to make this choice.

Marie Stopes is trying to do good with this commercial and spread awareness. I doubt anyone sat down and said, “Lets try to manipulate people into getting abortions.”

But by allowing this commercial, and the pro life ad aired during the Superbowl, we open the door to coercion.

The ads are gentle now, not even mentioning their intended subject matter. But eventually one side will make a more aggressive move and the other side will have to counter. There is only one way this can play out.

The losers will be the people staring at themselves in the mirror, praying that they are making the right decision.

Also read: Superbowl Ad Will Be Anti-Choice

Focus On Family Ad Focuses On Family, Ignores Abortion