Many products long not advertised on television now are commonly promoted during ad breaks. Writer Danielle Campoamor would like to add one more type of commercial to that list.
“Why is it that I never see an ad for abortion services?” wondered Campoamor in a Sunday piece for Salon. “Why are we willing to use women’s bodies in ads, but rarely see ads that would benefit women’s bodies?...Society has manipulated abortion and the way in which it is viewed, changing it from a medical procedure to an exhausted topic of debate.”
Campoamor closed by contrasting the abundance of exploitative TV ads with the absence of commercials for abortion providers: “I think about some woman, somewhere, who is no doubt desperately searching for accurate information so she can weigh her options and decide how she should treat her unintended pregnancy…If only she was looking for a boob job or a cheeseburger or Viagra, instead.”
From Campoamor’s article (bolding added):
I’m flipping through channels…
I see an ad for cheeseburgers. A woman’s breasts are being used to sell a double-stacked mound of beef…
I see three separate ads on three separate channels for products used to treat erectile dysfunction…
I see an ad for breast augmentation at a local surgical clinic…
There’s an ad for depression medication and an ad for the newest line of mascara and another two ads for hair dye.
And while I am attempting to relax and turn my brain off, instead it shifts into overdrive. Why is it that I never see an ad for abortion services?...
…Why are we willing to use women’s bodies in ads, but rarely see ads that would benefit women’s bodies?
A week later, I had my answer.
Carafem, a health clinic specializing in abortion…recently tried to advertise…on the Metro Transit Authority (MTA) buses and trains…
The organization’s ads…were deemed inappropriate because they mentioned the word “abortion,” therefore violating MTA’s policy of not letting issue-based advertising on its system…
Since when is a medical procedure a social issue?
Does that mean the MTA would refuse an ad from, say, the Cancer Society? What about Viagra, used to treat a medical condition that plagues a large number of men? What about OB-GYN services and birthing centers?...
Predictably, the MTA changed its stance [after] the Washington Post wrote a…story about Carafem.
But a larger — and dangerous — problem remains. Society has manipulated abortion and the way in which it is viewed, changing it from a medical procedure to an exhausted topic of debate…
…I think about some woman, somewhere, who is no doubt desperately searching for accurate information so she can weigh her options and decide how she should treat her unintended pregnancy.
If only she was looking for a boob job or a cheeseburger or Viagra, instead.
