I was surprised to see an ad during the Olympics on NBC Sports for the pro-life cause Choose Life. NBC is fiercely liberal, so they tend to reject ads like this one. (So does the Super Bowl, by the way. My guess is, they don’t want the activist backlash, and I don’t blame them, because neither would I.)
The ad just shows a series of faces, some teens and some little kids, saying: “Thanks, Mom!” It’s similar to the P&G Olympics ad, only rather than saying thanks for the support, the kids are saying thanks for not aborting them.
It strikes me that this ad is ridiculously easy to make fun of. All you’d have to do is show bratty kids saying stuff like: “I hate you!” and “I never asked to be born!” (Kids always say that at some point.)
Also, it would be easy to make a rebuttal ad from Planned Parenthood showing economic statistics for teen mothers and showing how having children before intended severely limits a woman’s options in life, as well as showing overpopulation’s disastrous environmental consequences. But what would work best, I’d think, for contraceptives for women, would be just showing ultra bratty kids trashing a house and the mother not being able to control the situation. (There’s a European ad for a condom that shows a kid having a meltdown in a supermarket that’s pretty funny, and it’s essentially the same concept: being a parent is really hard work. Although in the case of the condom ad, I think it was more geared towards showing how having a kid can cramp a guy’s style.)
I can’t seem to find the Choose Life ad, but here’s that supermarket meltdown condom ad:
(Full disclosure, I’m pro-choice, not because I am a fan of abortion, but because I don’t think it should be up to me or to politicians what choices women get to make about their own bodies.)
