A Song Sung in the Key of Abortion

I drive. A lot. Most likely, more than you do. I drive all over the country, from East to West, and North to South. I witness cultural shifts—unlike their Northern counterparts, Southern Dairy Queens have no chocolate ice cream, and therefore no twist cones—and hypocrisies aplenty; there are more porn shops along the Georgian interstates of the Bible belt than just about anywhere else in America.

One commonality across all the country is the ever-lovely, semi-ubiquitous anti-abortion billboard. No matter what part of America you’re in, you find them in the same type of setting: rural, lightly populated areas. Whether they are well-designed, expensive advertisements or hand-made scribbles placed in a front yard, farmland trumps the urban environment when it comes to preaching a love of life.

Abortion, you see, is like real estate; it’s all about location, location, location. Like with racism, when advertising for converts, you have to target a group of people afraid of reality and who don’t interact with the so-called offending others they judge. You could never put an anti-choice billboard on a freeway in Chicago or Dallas; every rush hour you’d lose the very people you’re trying to entice. Reverse psychology would accidently trump the billboard’s intended purpose. An angry driver sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for 45 minutes twice a day would read, “I’m a child, not a choice” and begin wishing more people would make the choice to eliminate future auto owners. If anything, pro-choice billboards would be insanely more effective in major cities; “Abortion: if the parents of the people in the car next to you had-had one, you’d be home by now!” If that’s too long, you could hire an advertising firm to punch up your case with little slogans or a catchphrase: “Abortion: the other white meat!” “Abortion: It’s what’s for dinner!” Something the trendsetters could get behind and chant when marching on Washington.

Targeting a focused demographic is something the anti-choice/pro-anger folks do exceedingly well. If I’ve seen one, I’ve seen a million billboards containing the picture of a pretty and perky little blonde girl, smiling next to the phrase, “Thanks for not killing me, mommy!” It’s great advertising, but like all advertising, is unrealistic. Just like a beer commercial promises you hot, bikini-clad women fawning over you should you drink their product, the cute little white girl is simply advertisers understanding their demographic: fearful white people. This is a group that is beyond easy to manipulate, which is why advertisers love them. Every election cycle, politically savvy campaigners ignore platforms and push fear. Even if their candidate loses, it still generates results. Remember, 44,000,000 duped souls voted “Old man and Idiot” in 2008. Knowing this, Pro-Choice campaigns should move into the farmland and counter the little white girl with billboards of their own: billboards of a premature, inner-city, under-weight African-American crack baby next to the slogan: “Thanks for having me, mommy! I can’t wait until I’m old enough to be on welfare!” Combat the white girl abortion fantasy with the fear the same folks have of black people. It’d be great.

The problem with the Pro-Choice movement is that it’s too passive. It appeals to people’s reason, logic and sense of decency. Which means it doesn’t have much of a chance when stacked up against those who shout angrily and act irrationally.

Such is life.