New TV Ads Focus on Partial-Birth Abortion

Television ads are a potent method of educating the public with the pro-life message. The VSHL Education Fund has used this medium for several years since the ads reach many people who would never attend a pro-life presentation or read a pro-life book or article. The Education Fund will now begin using a set of new ads which were produced by National Right to Life and deal with partial-birth abortion.

Why focus on this particularly gruesome method of abortion? In addition to the need to generate sufficient public opinion to finally outlaw them, it is now evident that knowledge of partial-birth abortion also results in eroding support for abortion on demand. On January 21, 1998, USA Today reported: "An analysis of eight USA Today/CNN/Gallup polls . . . shows a significant drop -- eight percentage points -- in the number of people who say they support legal abortion under any circumstances. The shift, seen in four polls since July 1996, coincides with the political debate over what opponents call 'partial-birth abortion'"

To pro-lifers, the reason is obvious. The partial-birth abortion debate focuses squarely on the baby which pro-abortion proponents never want to talk about. And if it becomes clear that it is indeed a baby that is being killed in a partial-birth abortion, what then is happening in an abortion a few days or weeks earlier in a pregnancy? When people start thinking about such things, support for abortion drops.

The ads have been subjected to rigorous focus group testing conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide in several parts of the country, including Virginia. The testing indicated that the spots were not only successful in convincing most respondents (who identified themselves as "pro-choice") that partial-birth abortions are wrong, but also in convincing many of them that nearly all abortions are wrong.

Published in VSHL Lifesaver - August 1998