The Super Bowl is one of the most highly anticipated television events of the year, and is equally exciting for its advertisements. Advertisers pay obscene amounts of money to secure a slot, which will ensure millions of Americans will see their products. Naturally, the promise of such exposure draws in a wide variety of concepts and content. Now, these may include graphic anti-abortion advertisements endorsed by Democrat presidential hopeful Kendall Terry.
This is not a novel concept. Abortion has been a subject of advertising during the Super Bowl before. However, these ads promise to be intensely graphic and come with a warning for their content. This decision serves to open a wider debate over whether the Super Bowl is an appropriate forum for such an explicit campaign. According to a Jan.22 article on CNN’s website, Section 315 of the FCC Telecommunications Act ensures television stations cannot alter or edit any content of ads belonging to candidates. Therefore, there is nothing preventing these unsettling images from being spread to hundreds of homes.
The whole controversy began when a blogger named Sophia Brugato decided to further her pro-choice cause. Every time Tim Tebow scored a touchdown for the Denver Broncos, she urged followers to donate ten dollars to a pro-choice organization. Death threats and hate mail ensued with terrifying ferocity. Kendall Terry perceived a call for increased awareness as a call to arms, and battle now ensues.
One must take into account that the Super Bowl attracts audiences of all ages, and such scarring images will be detrimental to the overall debate. Violent and graphic content is usually prohibited from television that expects younger viewers, and the Super Bowl certainly falls under that category. This is not a matter of censoring messages, but it calls into question how best to get those messages out into the public domain. Nudity and bloodshed are usually censored; a headless fetus surely falls under the category of unsettling content. Evidently, Terry will be eager to capitalize on an event that captures the nation’s attention for an extended period of time. However, one needs to accept which boundaries need to be acknowledged, especially when such extremities are crossing lines. The debate regarding abortion is a complex one to address; sensationalism will only inhibit productive dialogue.
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