An average of 111 million people watched Super Bowl 50, so the number who viewed the now-famous commercial featuring a father eating a bag of Doritos while his expectant wife gets an ultrasound must have been watched by most of those viewers. The commercial, employing that zany style of humor that the big game’s watchers have come to look forward to, follows the actions of the baby in the womb, who follows his father’s munching with special interest to the point of trying to grab a Dorito for himself (or herself).
So intent is the baby in sharing in the father’s snack, that when the infuriated Mom snatches the chip from her husband’s hand and tosses it across the room, the baby makes a hasty exit from the womb to go after it! (See the video below.)
The typical Super Bowl viewer, who thrives on such outlandish humor as a key part of the evening’s entertainment, surely appreciated this entertaining ad as much as he enjoyed watching the Broncos battle against the Panthers.
The abortion advocates at NARAL Pro-Choice America, however, were not at all amused. Someone at NARAL sent the following tweet: #NotBuyingIt — that @Doritos ad using #antichoice tactic of humanizing fetuses & sexist tropes of dads as clueless & moms as uptight. #SB50
Apparently, if we are to understand NARAL’s grievance correctly, they objected to the fact that the unborn baby (or “fetus,” in medical terms) looked exactly like what it was — a human baby! Perhaps they would have been more appreciative of the ad if the unborn baby had looked more like a platypus — or even a Dorito.
As soon as NARAL’s complaining tweet was posted online, the Internet went viral with legions of people posting their own takes on the “controversy” on social media. Many people offered brilliant counter-punches to NARAL’s silly remarks.
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One of these retorts, in particular, caught the eye of John Jalsevac, the managing editor of LifeSiteNews.com. In an online column posted on February 8, Jalsevac posted an essay entitled, “The best response yet to the pro-abort freak-out over that Doritos Superbowl ad.”
Jalsevac said one of the best responses he’d read came from Dr. Robert George, a pro-life professor at Princeton University, who posted on Facebook:
I gather that the really big news, as always, had to do with a commercial advertisement that was broadcast in the course of the game. Evidently, a potato chip manufacturer, or some such profit-driven purveyor of packaged foodstuffs, showed a video image of an unborn baby. This shocked and appalled the folks at NARAL, the big abortion lobby, who promptly accused the company responsible for the ad of “humanizing the fetus.” Since, however, the fetus in the video was, by all accounts, a human fetus, the offspring of human parents, and not a bovine, canine, or feline fetus, it’s less than clear how it is that the potato chip company (or whatever it was) is to blame for the humanization. Surely NARAL’s complaint would be more fairly lodged against God, or nature, or plain old biological reality.
Jalsevac followed up with a comment of his own: “Memo to NARAL: that’s what an unborn baby actually looks like.” (Emphasis in original.)
The explanation of why NARAL has made such a stink about a harmless, humorous commercial for corn chips is obvious to those of us who have been engaged in pro-life activity for some time. It has been demonstrated time and time again that pregnant women who are contemplating abortion are very likely to change their mind and have their baby once they have seen an ultrasound demonstrating to them the reality that NARAL and Planned Parenthood and others in the abortion industry consistently try to hide: The “fetus” is a real-life baby.
If this is so, why should NARAL and other pro-abortion advocates care if a pregnant woman sees the ultrasound and changes her mind? They are supposedly “pro-choice” after all. Isn’t a woman’s decision not to have an abortion a choice?
It may be, but it is not, however, the choice that is most profitable for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. As the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood has a combined annual revenue of $1.3 billion. Therefore, anyone or anything that deters women from going to their facilities for an abortion instead of going to a crisis pregnancy center that encourages woman to have their babies is a threat to that very large bottom line.
The connection between pregnant women seeing their unborn baby on an ultrasound and deciding against having an abortion is so strong that making this option available has become a major strategy among pro-lifers. All across America, crisis pregnancy centers utilize ultrasounds, along with providing women in crisis pregnancies with support such as counseling, baby clothes, baby food and formula, apartment referrals, and other services, as part of their pro-life work.
Since ultrasound machines are costly, some pro-life organizations have conducted campaigns to provide them to pregnancy centers. One of the largest such program is the Knights of Columbus Ultrasound Initiative conducted by the Catholic fraternal organization. The Knights of Columbus (K of C) launched that initiative on January 22, 2009, the 36th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. According to the K of C, the “new initiative aimed at providing women considering abortion a new way of viewing the life within them.” The information on the K of C website notes:
On that day, the K of C Supreme Council matched funds raised by Knights in Florida and Iowa to provide two pregnancy care centers complete funding for the acquisition of ultrasound machines that will help the centers to provide for the health of both mother and child…. Without K of C support, most pregnancy care centers would be unable to purchase the ultrasound machines, each usually costing tens of thousands of dollars.
Many pro-life state legislators believe that until such time as abortion is once again prohibited entirely, doctors performing abortions should at least be required to show women who are trying to decide whether or not to have an abortion an ultrasound image of their unborn child, so they can at least make an informed choice. Too many have fallen for the falsehood that the baby growing within them is “just a blob of tissue.”
The Henry Kaiser Family Foundation has compiled a status report entitled “State Ultrasound Requirements in Abortion Procedure” that summarizes state laws on that subject as of last October. The report notes that 25 states have some requirements for offering an ultrasound to abortion candidates. Of these, 12 require that a woman must receive information on accessing ultrasound services. Three require the abortionist to provide an ultrasound and display and describe the image of the baby to the woman. Ten require the abortion provider to provide an ultrasound and offer the woman an opportunity to view the image. Nine states mandate that if the provider conducts an ultrasound as part of the preparation for an abortion, he must offer the woman an opportunity to view the image. And six require that an ultrasound must be offered by the abortion provider to the woman.
Several such laws have been struck down or put on hold by state or federal judges, so the battle to provide women contemplating an abortion with the most compelling evidence available that their unborn baby is a real human being continues.
NARAL was evidently worried that the Doritos ad, though intended as a humorous way to encourage the purchase of corn chips, might have shown millions of women what the abortion lobby does not want them to see. It might have unintentionally supplied “truth in advertising” to a much wider segment of the population than snack purchasers.
Image at top: screenshot from YouTube video of Doritos Super Bowl commercial
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