Terrifying demon child defends Christmas

 St. Mary's Church, a Catholic congregation in New Jersey, recently released this bizarre and confusing PSA about the "War on Christmas":



It was actually aired on Fox News and MSNBC. Its equally confusing YouTube description states, "Happiness can be expressed through a smile or a religion. Will negative people try controlling the way we smile next?"

The narrator, Jim Flood, sounds a little like Leonard Nimoy. And the girl, whose name is kept secret (thankfully) sounds like a banshee from the darkest depths of superstition.

Here's two of their other contributions to the weird video literature of religious fundamentalism:

Buzzfeed gets sucked into the "pro-life" movement

We all love and hate Buzzfeed, to various extents. The community is mostly link-bait lists, with the occasionally in-depth post. And Copyranter is pretty cool.

But the very structure of Buzzfeed — a community with an insatiable hunger for new content, and upvoting by members, makes it vulnerable to organized political takeover.

And that's what has apparently happened with the "personhoodusa" account. Political posts like 8 "Outrageous Things Planned Parenthood Was Caught Doing" and "5 Incredible Videos Of Life In The Womb" are appearing in the stream alongside "27 Everyday Decisions That Twentysomethings Are Really Bad At Making" and "The Spiedie Is A Perfect And Important Sandwich".

I'm sure Buzzfeed is just trying to stay out of anything serious, but considering they have a dedicated LGBT section, people might have assumed they were pretty progressive. Now that the anti-abortion posts are starting to cause some blowback, it will be interesting to see how they respond.

Travel campaign offers a brutal take on mob mentality — but is it for real?

The submission on Ads of The World says "JWT, Gurgaon, India" but I have to give the J. Walter Thompson Company the benefit of my skepticism. The campaign is courting controversy in such a ham-fisted and immature way.

Above, the Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot (mistakenly labelled "Football Riot") stands in for what Charles Mackay coined as "the madness of crowds". As an ad concept, it's tenuous at best, contrasting the idea of "individual travel plans" against mob mentality.

But the creative team of Bobby Pawar, Priti Kapur, Sayantan Choudhury, Sumeer Mathur
and Sumonto Ghosh didn't stop there.

They decided to go after American anti-abortionists:

Dog fights:

Toddlers in Tiaras:

Gun obsession:

And racism:

Pretty ballsy social commentary, but what does it have to do with selling travel? All I get out of it is that Indian tourists should avoid North America at all costs. (Interestingly, Chariot India "journeys of discovery to India, Nepal and Bhutan, in South Asia," so maybe that was the idea all along.)

To me, this is another example of belief in the stupid old adage that there's "no such thing as bad publicity".  There is... for brands. It's the creative teams and agencies that really benefit from these "edgy" campaigns, as the ad community congratulates them for convincing someone else to pay for another self-serving attempt at notoriety.

Racism again rears its ugly head in anti-abortion ads

It's not the first time charges of racism have been levelled at a "pro-life" ad, but this time there was nothing subtle about the message:

Via Tumblr

This was a homemade job, that showed up on the campus of the University of New Mexico recently. And Native American students were not happy about it:



Feministing reports that a representative for 40 Days for Life, who were thought to be behind the posters, denied that they were associated with the group.

Student placards read, “Racism is not pro-life” and “We will not be used to further your political purpose.”

Feminsting adds:

Native women–who face rates of sexual violence that are twice as high as the rest of the country–often severely lack access to reproductive health care. A recent report found that only 10 percent of the pharmacies in the Indian Health Service system offered Plan B over the counter. And thanks to the Hyde smendment, abortion isn’t covered under the IHS or Medicaid.

Campaign to ban lifejackets: Great concept, poor execution

Via Buzzfeed

While this poster tries a little too hard, the concept is a good one: what if right wing politicians treated every safety device the way they treat birth control?

I think where this gag petition goes wrong is when it changes mid-stream from making fun on abstinence-only education and attempted healthcare exclusions (and even bans) on birth control  to wade into the murk of Rep. Todd Akin's biologically-questionable "legitimate rape" comment:

“It seems to be, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”

Not that Rep. Akin doesn't deserve the full might of the snarky internet against him. It's just that every professional communicator knows that you have to focus your message. The Akin thing is about abortion, not contraception, and the life jacket metaphor isn't nearly as strong.

Kids for making more kids (within marriage)

Jezebel shared the news about a pro-abstinence/anti-birth-control group called 1flesh. Styling itself as a grassroots organization, it uses youth-friendly graphics and messaging to celebrate the joys of procreative marital sex:

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At the same time, it preaches some potentially misleading arguments about the efficacy of contraceptives in preventing unplanned pregnancy and disease:

What is going on here? It's almost like they're trying to run a white, christian, breeding program. Which is a pretty smart strategy from a political point of view. Get those horny kids to keep their pants on until marriage, then turn the young woman's reproductive parts into a baby factory — a clown car, if you will — of Duggar proportions.

"But what about overpopulation?", you might ask.

The whole “Save the World: Don’t Have Kids” idea is, in retrospect, just plain silly. The worldwide fertility rate fell throughout the same period... Even if we were to pretend that the world was in a desperate state of looming overpopulation, artificial contraception on its own wouldn’t be of much use. It does not reduce the rate of unintended pregnancies. We’ve been duped into demanding a bad solution to a non-existent problem. It’s time to move on.

Move on. Get married. Have babies.

But a full reading of the site does show that it promotes one method of family planning: the Creighton Model Fertiltycare™ System. It's an initiative of the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction. And it's basically a modern version of the rhythm method (with cervical mucus observation instead of guesswork).

According to Wikipedia:

The effectiveness of the CrMS, as of most forms of birth control, can be assessed two ways. Perfect use or method effectiveness rates only include people who follow all observational rules, correctly identify the fertile phase, and refrain from unprotected intercourse on days identified as fertile. Actual use, or typical use effectiveness rates are of all women intending to avoid pregnancy by using CrMS, including those who fail to meet the "perfect use" criteria. 

The Pope Paul VI Institute reports a perfect-use effectiveness rate of 99.5% in the first year.In clinical studies of the CrMS conducted at the Pope Paul VI Institute, researchers excluded most pregnancies from the typical-use rate calculation, on the grounds that they believed the affected couples had used the method to deliberately attempt pregnancy. The Institute reports a typical-use effectiveness of 96.8% in the first year. Most studies of similar systems do not exclude such pregnancies from the typical-use failure rate.

Remember how 1flesh said that condoms don't work?

The condom’s use-effectiveness rate is 85%.  This means that, under real-world conditions, a woman whose sexual partners use condoms for every act of sexual intercourse has a 15% chance of becoming pregnant in a year. And while oral contraceptives are more effective, studies have shown that after three years of use, the failure rates of oral contraceptives was 4.7% for 24-day regimen pills and 6.7% for 21-day regimen pills. The FDA’s conclusion is that the use-effectiveness of oral contraceptives is 95%. A 2011 study, Contraceptive failure in the United States, found the Pill’s actual failure rate to be 9%. 

Though the numbers shift in various studies, in every case, natural methods of family planning — specifically the Creighton Model FertilityCare System — are more effective at preventing unintended pregnancies, with a use-effectiveness of 96.8-98%. The idea that the widespread use of artificial contraception will help end the stressful incidence of unintended pregnancy — while hopeful — has been debunked. The answer is not pill or a rubber. It’s having a true understanding of a woman’s body and cooperating with it. 

This is from the source they cited at About.comhttp://contraception.about.com/od/overthecounterchoices/p/OTC.htm:

Condom (Male)Typical use: 85% effectivePerfect use: 98% effectiveOf every 100 women whose partners use condoms, 15 will become pregnant (with typical use) and 2 will become pregnant with perfect use

The PillTypical use: 92% effectivePerfect use: 99.7% effectiveOf every 100 women who use The Pill, 8 will become pregnant (with typical use) within the first year and less than one will become pregnant with perfect use

Waitaminute. Did they just compare perfect use of their "natural" birth control with "typical use" of condoms and the pill? Yes, yes they did.

When you get to the bottom of it, 1flesh's "grassroots" movement is anything but. It's a highly organized campaign of reproductive misinformation designed to recruit a new generation of social conservative, anti-reproductive choice, voters, using generational mouthpieces like Patheos blogger Marc Barnes to make being quiverfull more palatable to Millennials. 

Rebel propaganda from the US #waronwomen

by "Rain L." Source

MoveOn.org calls it, "The Most Disturbing Way To Encourage People To Vote That We've Seen This Year."

I think it's awesome.

As fringe American conservatives continue to restrict women's reproductive rights in the United States, this poster is an iconic reminder of the bad old days of back-alley abortions.

Canadian Parliament to face the "personhood" debate

Sharable ad from the "Not Yet Born" blog,
linked from Stephen Woodworth's official site.

If there's one issue Canada's majority Conservative government would rather not talk about, it's abortion. Not covered by any specific legislation since 1988, the deeply divisive medical procedure is something many Canadians, regardless of their personal beliefs, just don't feel comfortable talking about in public.

That may soon change, however, as Kitchener's Conservative MP, backbencher Stephen Woodworth, has convinced his party to let him have an hour of Parliament's time to discuss Motion 312, his request that "a special committee of the House be appointed and directed to review the declaration in Subsection 223(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada which states that a child becomes a human being only at the moment of complete birth and to answer the questions hereinafter set forth."

The Honourable Member has positioned himself as the Canadian champion of this cause, similar to the American anti-abortion Personhood movement.

In his own words:

“Canada’s 400 year old definition of human being says children are not human beings until the moment of complete birth”, he said.  “I’ve concluded that modern medical science will inform us that children are in reality human beings at some point before the moment of complete birth.  Canadians need to know there’s no human rights for children before complete birth.
...
A respectful dialogue to update a 400 year old definition of human being with the aid of twenty-first century information will benefit everyone. Whatever view one has about other issues, does it make medical sense in the twenty-first century to say that a child is not a human being until the moment of complete birth?  Members of Parliament have a duty not to accept any law that says some human beings are not human.”

The complication, of course, comes when we try to determine what makes a developing human a "person".

In the United States, the debate is a religious one:

"Personhood is a movement working to respect the God-given right to life by recognizing all human beings as persons who are 'created in the image of God' from the beginning of their biological development, without exceptions."

 This has resulted in attempts to overthrow the legality of abortion in some states, such as Mississippi (where the failed "personhood amendment"would have given full legal rights to a fertilized egg) and Ohio (where the "heartbeat bill" pending debate would ban abortions at the first recordable sign of cardiovascular activity around 9+ weeks).

Mr. Woodworth is proposing a "scientific" approach to determining what makes  human a "person" under the law. But such definitions will by their very nature be philosophical, since the definition must be clarified to be tested: does a heartbeat make us fully human? Reaction to outside stimulus? Observable brain activity? The ability to survive outside the womb? Or simply having been fertilized, and therefore having become genetically distinct from the mother?

This is a classic "slippery slope", an it slides in two opposite directions. On one end is the total ban on abortion from the moment of conception. On the other is the ability to terminally abort a healthy full-term baby. (Nobody really wants the latter, but it's what Mr. Woodworth is implying as the problem.)

In the end, it will come to the same argument about whose rights triumph: a self-aware pregnant woman's control over her own body versus the state's power to compel her to carry the developing human inside her to term. And it will be ugly.

Pink Stink: Susan G. Komen for the Cure gets political

Update: Jezebel reports (Feb 3) that Komen has reinstated funding to Planned Parenthood.

 Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the most powerful brand in the world involved in fundraising for breast cancer prevention and research, has had its share of problems.

There was "Buckets for The Cure" — remember that?

Putting their brand, indiscriminately, on any retail item (regardless of whether it was healthy or not) gave rise to the pinkwashing backlash. Not only was the appropriateness of the various cobrandings questioned by many, but also the efficacy of the fundraising and their aggressive trademark practices.

The last straw, for me, was when they launched their own line of perfume which Breast Cancer Action claimed contains cancer-causing compounds.

Increasingly, this organization seems to operate like any big brand, with a ruthless desire to grow its influence, generate revenue, and eliminate competition. Is that really what cause marketing is supposed to be about?

Their response:

"Research doesn’t come cheap. We need to raise money, and we’re not apologetic about it,” [spokesperson Leslie] Aun said. Komen, founded in 1982, has contributed $685 million to breast cancer research and $1.3 billion to community programs that help with mammograms, transportation and other needs, Aun said. Komen would love not to have to do marketing, but that simply is not realistic, she said. 

“We don’t think there’s enough pink. We’re able to make those investments in research because of programs like that.”

But much of Komen's credibility as a serious champion of women's health collapsed this week when it was learned that they decided to stop funding breast screening for low-income women through Planned Parenthood.

The politics are ugly. The anti-abortion lobby in the United States has been trying to shut down planned parenthood for the past couple of years, convincing governments to defund its health operations because they include the provision of abortions (in addition to birth control and many other community health services).

According to the Washington Post, two women can be credited with Komen going political and joining the ranks of the American pro-life movement. Komen's Vice President for Policy for the past year, Karen Handel, is a politician who made a run at the Governorship of Georgia on an anti-abortion ticket. And then there's Americans United for Life President Charmaine Yoest, who is responsible for Planned Parenthood being investigated by the Energy and Commerce Committee — giving Komen the excuse to defund.

Oh, and what's this?

"Immediately after hearing the news of the Komen Foundation’s decision to withdraw its funding from Planned Parenthood, breast cancer survivor Dr. Charmaine Yoest registered 'Team Life' and pledged to rejoin the Global Race for the Cure in Washington, D.C. on June 2, 2012. 

'The Komen Foundation’s decision to disassociate itself from the scandal-ridden abortion provider should be applauded and encouraged by pro-life women across the country,' said Dr. Yoest."

This decision by Komen to firmly entrench itself in the politics of reproductive choice will be a fateful one. It will certainly lead to more support by those who side with the decision. But what about the millions of "mainstream" supporters — including many women's health groups — who were happily buying pink and doing fundraising as an apolitical feel-good move? Do they really want to have to choose sides?

The backlash has already begun.

There is an interesting result of all the media frenzy, though. Gothamist reports that through online networking alone, Planned Parenthood was able to raise $650,000 (the number keeps going up) in private donations in just 24 hours. Last year, Komen's funding was $680,000.

With government funding for not-for-profits on the decline anyway, Planned Parenthood may want to look to social media fundraising as the way of the future.

UPDATE: Mashable reports that Komen has also pissed off the hacker community:

Ouch.

Christmas toys weigh in on the abortion debate

via AdFreak

Thanks, Niagara Region Right to Life. Because what a complex scientific and ethical debate about the nature of humanity and reproductive rights really needs... is more crying nutcrackers.

F'd Ad Fridays: Terrible logo idea for a maternity store

I guess it's cute how innocent Room for Two Maternity is, accidentally choosing the horrific symbol of back-alley abortions for their brand.

At least it's not as bad as this one:

Via Copyranter

A modest proposal to rebrand Ohio's "Heart Beat Bill"

Jezebel shared this irritating ad from Ohio ProLife Action about the State's controversial Heart Beat Bill :



It's not just the low production values, awful script, and nasally voiceover that I find irksome. It's the missed opportunity.

If you want people to visualize a "busload of children" being killed every day the anti-abortion bill (which bans termination at about about 6 weeks from conception) is delayed, you need to do more than show a bunch of home movie shots. You need to move people.

After all, just getting people to see a 6-week-old human embryo as a child can be a bit of a stretch:

Especially since up to a third of conceptions miscarry—80% of them within the first 12 weeks. So even Mother Nature isn't onboard with your mission to "protect all innocent human life".

No, if we're going to get people to back this bill we need to give them something to get their hearts and fists pumping. Don't just show the busload of kids. Show them at the mercy of a psychopath bent on their destruction. And don't just promote a bill, give the thing some personality and have it kick psycho ass and literally save the day.

You know what I'm getting at here? This story has been told before. You know who else saved a whole busload of embryos — I mean, children — in a single day?

Dirty Goddamn Harry, that's who.

Here (new window) is how that PSA should have gone down.

You can call it the "Dirty Harry Bill". Or the "Do you feel a heartbeat, punk?" ... umm, Bill.

It's got everything the religious right likes:

• Clear-cut good and evil (okay, Harry's a racist and sexist who wants all criminals dead, but those are virtues in some circles).
• Guns. They love their guns.
• Awesome funky soundtrack. (Just tell them it's a new kind of "Baptist Gospel")
• Innocent victims.
• Clint. (Although he is no longer a Republican, he was then.)

I really think they should consider buying up this footage. Either that, or mitigate high abortion rates by providing youth with harm reduction based sex education and really easy access to contraceptives, as well as by addressing the fundamental socioeconomic problems behind unwanted pregnancy.

Nah, definitely Dirty Harry.

Tip via Jezebel.