Political ads pander to the simple-minded masses, and on America’s biggest stage, Grand Junction will have front row seats to fear-mongering messages of darkest-of-the-darkhorses,  Democratic Presidential candidate Randall Terry.
Terry and his pro-life cronies are bringing graphic images of aborted fetuses to the Super Bowl, where they will run alongside some quality, entertaining commercials.
Regardless of your opinion on abortion, these commercials have no place in the largest TV event of the year. The commercials use grotesque images, such as an embryonic hand reaching into the air and a fetus’s arm sitting on a dime, to shock viewers.
There aren’t pro-choice groups running ads featuring women dying from forced-birth complications because that would be wildly inappropriate. Why is this any different? If groups like this are so set on promoting the personhood of a fetus, why would showing dead “people” as a scare tactic be considered appropriate by any standard? Groups like Right to Life already have too much leeway. Stunts like this, and even worse, are all too familiar.
Dr. David Gunn was killed after pro-life group Operation Rescue distributed wanted-poster style fliers with his name on it. His killer shouted: “Don’t kill any more babies” before shooting Gunn three times in the back. Despite provoking the murder of a doctor, Operation Rescue somehow got off the hook.
A group of college-aged people fire-bombed an abortion clinic claiming it was “a gift to Jesus on his birthday.”
Pro-life billboards and television ads have featured dead fetuses as a natural ploy for a long time.
If pro-life groups are so concerned about the personhood of a fetus, start treating fetuses like people. Quit exploiting them on television to draw exposure to your donation-based pro-life group. Quit trying to make a quick buck by blasting people with violent images during the Super Bowl. Violent and exploitative images have pro-life groups talking out of both sides of their mouths. Evangelical groups want to preach love and goodness to other people. So quit tying it up in political dogma and work to make a change that isn’t screaming about heaven and hell on the side of the road to people who don’t want to hear it.
Terry is the worst kind of predator. He is preying on the emotions of impressionable people for his own political benefit. Shock factor has no place in an audience that includes children.
If groups like this spent less time trying to scare people, and more time trying to help people, maybe abortion wouldn’t be as much of a “problem.”