This year I didn’t care which team won the Super Bowl. So while I did watch most of the football game, I perhaps paid more attention to the commercials.
One of the commercials that caught my eye was one for Doritos. It featured a pregnant woman having a sonogram in a hospital. The screen showed a picture of the baby inside her womb.
The father of the baby was eating Doritos. The baby’s arms started to move towards a chip and the baby actually came out of the womb to get his own chip.
It was a creative commercial and certainly got people’s attention. I thought it was clever and didn’t think anything else about it.
Backlash about ‘humanizing fetuses’
That is, until I heard there was a backlash from people affiliated with the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), which criticized Doritos for “humanizing fetuses.”
As writer Cal Thomas of the Tribune Content Agency wrote about the commercial, “Humanizing fetuses? Just what does that sonogram image show if not a human?”
As Thomas pointed out, pro-choicers fear the sonogram, “precisely because it shows an image whose humanness cannot be denied.”
Power of ultrasounds
It has been shown that women who see images of their unborn children have often changed their minds about having an abortion. Many states now require that women seeking an abortion have the opportunity to view an ultrasound image.
Wisconsin’s ultrasound bill was signed into law in 2013. It is called “Sonya’s Law,” because it was named after Sonya, a mother of two children who became pregnant.
Sonya was worried about how she could handle another child emotionally and financially. She seriously thought about having an abortion.
Sonya then saw an ad on a bus about a free ultrasound. She decided to have one and saw her child whose heart was beating. That convinced her to make the decision to carry him to term.
The Wisconsin law provides that women be given the opportunity to see their baby through ultrasound before the mother makes a choice about how to proceed with her pregnancy.
Making an informed decision
Thomas also noted in his article that we have laws requiring labels on food we buy at the supermarket. We are required to be given certain information when we seek a bank loan, buy a house or car, and before surgery.
Showing a pregnant woman a picture of the baby inside her should result in a more informed decision.
If pro-choice people were truly pro-choice, they would not protest any effort to give pregnant women information about their unborn baby.
Lucrative business
But we know that abortion is a lucrative business. Planned Parenthood (America’s largest abortion provider) receives government grants and contracts worth over $1 billion a year, according to one source.
As of February 11, legislation cutting Planned Parenthood’s heavily inflated Medicaid contraceptive drug reimbursement rate passed both houses of the state Legislature and is heading to Governor Scott Walker’s desk for his signature. This legislation would eliminate $4.5 million in public funding for Planned Parenthood. Our state is also attempting to ban the sale and use of aborted baby parts.
We should protect human life in all stages to the fullest degree. A baby in the womb is a human being, as the Doritos commercial clearly revealed.
I applaud Doritos for making this positive commercial and hope its parent company, Frito-Lay, will continue to air it in the future.