How appropriate that Britain’s first televised abortion advert, as reported in the Telegraph today, will be
broadcast during a game show hosted by Davina McCall which carries the
strapline: “Do you want to be given a MILLION pounds live on TV?” How
wonderfully dystopian, like something from a 1980s satire on jungle capitalism,
such as Robocop or The Running Man. Win a fortune! Have an
abortion!
And how odd someone awaking from a 30-year coma might find the values of our country, as reflected in television. You can’t advertise cigarettes at any time or fatty foods during children’s shows, because it might harm the health of children, but you can advertise the killing of unborn children in the middle of a game show. (Likewise you can’t smack your kids, according to the European Court, but you can kill them up to birth if they have a hairlip.)
Marie Stopes International is only able to circumvent broadcasting rules restrictions because, as a charity, it does not make a profit out of the operations. Well, up to a point – the increase in abortion numbers that may result from the advert could keep Marie Stopes employees in a job at a time when the charitable sector is going down the plughole.
Whether or not the adverts lead to women immediately ringing up their hotline, it will certainly lead to a culture where abortion is even more acceptable. A spokeswoman for the charity told this paper that it is “right to bring abortion out into the open”, since “one in three women will have one before they are 45.” What she means is that television advertising, which confers legitimacy on a product that the internet cannot match, will help to normalise the procedure as another lifestyle choice.
I wonder if future generations will look back at our attitude to abortion in the same way we view gladiatorial contests in Ancient Rome or the transatlantic slave trade – with bemusement and horror. It is not the act of abortion itself that would repulse them – abortion happens in all societies, including pre-1968 Britain. What they would find repulsive and odd is the public debate itself, the way it was defended as a “choice” – a word usually applied to consumerism.
Abortion is either the lesser or two evils – and necessary to avoid the risk of maternal death – or it is an absolute evil that should be restricted. Either way it is a messy, nasty business, and to frame it is as a choice requires dogmatically ignoring all evidence pointing to the obvious humanity of the unborn child in its second and third trimesters.
But this is exactly how the abortion issue has been framed over the past four decades, even though a “woman’s right to choose” turns out, by the law of unintended consequences, to be the woman’s responsibility to sort it out (no wonder, then, that sexually active unmarried men are almost universally in favour of this particular women’s right).
And the subtitle of that great slogan is “…but it’s the taxpayer’s duty to pay”. Almost 90 per cent of social abortions carried out on healthy foetuses in Britain are paid for by the taxpayers, as are the majority of Marie Stopes’ operations, which is why they are now able to advertise on television (on a taxpayer-subsidised station to boot). It’s good to know that, while we face the “demographic timebomb” of an ageing population and a shrinking base of taxpayers, those same taxpayers are paying to cull the next generation out of their dwindling supply of money. Future historians will marvel at the European social model.
And how odd someone awaking from a 30-year coma might find the values of our country, as reflected in television. You can’t advertise cigarettes at any time or fatty foods during children’s shows, because it might harm the health of children, but you can advertise the killing of unborn children in the middle of a game show. (Likewise you can’t smack your kids, according to the European Court, but you can kill them up to birth if they have a hairlip.)
Marie Stopes International is only able to circumvent broadcasting rules restrictions because, as a charity, it does not make a profit out of the operations. Well, up to a point – the increase in abortion numbers that may result from the advert could keep Marie Stopes employees in a job at a time when the charitable sector is going down the plughole.
Whether or not the adverts lead to women immediately ringing up their hotline, it will certainly lead to a culture where abortion is even more acceptable. A spokeswoman for the charity told this paper that it is “right to bring abortion out into the open”, since “one in three women will have one before they are 45.” What she means is that television advertising, which confers legitimacy on a product that the internet cannot match, will help to normalise the procedure as another lifestyle choice.
I wonder if future generations will look back at our attitude to abortion in the same way we view gladiatorial contests in Ancient Rome or the transatlantic slave trade – with bemusement and horror. It is not the act of abortion itself that would repulse them – abortion happens in all societies, including pre-1968 Britain. What they would find repulsive and odd is the public debate itself, the way it was defended as a “choice” – a word usually applied to consumerism.
Abortion is either the lesser or two evils – and necessary to avoid the risk of maternal death – or it is an absolute evil that should be restricted. Either way it is a messy, nasty business, and to frame it is as a choice requires dogmatically ignoring all evidence pointing to the obvious humanity of the unborn child in its second and third trimesters.
But this is exactly how the abortion issue has been framed over the past four decades, even though a “woman’s right to choose” turns out, by the law of unintended consequences, to be the woman’s responsibility to sort it out (no wonder, then, that sexually active unmarried men are almost universally in favour of this particular women’s right).
And the subtitle of that great slogan is “…but it’s the taxpayer’s duty to pay”. Almost 90 per cent of social abortions carried out on healthy foetuses in Britain are paid for by the taxpayers, as are the majority of Marie Stopes’ operations, which is why they are now able to advertise on television (on a taxpayer-subsidised station to boot). It’s good to know that, while we face the “demographic timebomb” of an ageing population and a shrinking base of taxpayers, those same taxpayers are paying to cull the next generation out of their dwindling supply of money. Future historians will marvel at the European social model.
1 comment:
If one in three already has an abortion than the choice already is normalized.
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