Gavin Yamey previews a US advertising campaign for mifepristone, the early pregnancy abortion pill
Dead fetuses. Weeping mothers. Doctors portrayed as murderers. In the United States, we are force fed a steady stream of graphic advertisements funded by opponents of abortion. Their latest target is mifepristone (RU-486), which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in September 2000.
Operation Rescue, an antiabortion group that believes in “taking the battle to the streets” (www.operationrescue.org), is driving its “Truth Truck” across the United States. The truck carries a billboard showing a fetus on the gloved palm of a doctor's hand, supposedly representing a pregnancy terminated by mifepristone. Next to it is a mother in anguish. The caption reads, “One dead. One wounded.”
In its “battle” to impede women from choosing to have an abortion, the antiabortion lobby has used advertising as a weapon. It makes sense, therefore, that supporters of mifepristone are using a national advertising campaign to fight back. An advert for the drug is set to appear in the July issues of 14 glossy women's magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Marie Claire, and it will run until November.
The $2m (£1.4m) advertising campaign has been funded by the National Abortion Federation, which is the largest professional group of abortion providers in the United States. The federation says that the advert will reach over 70% of women aged between 18 and 49 years.
The advert conveys a sense of empowerment, which is what the federation hoped to achieve. “We chose a picture of a woman rather than a pill,” said Vicki Saporta, the federation's executive director, “and shot the image ourselves, as we wanted to convey an openness that would say to women, ‘Come in and get the information.’ ”
So far, drug adverts in the United States aimed at consumers have had nothing to do with educating people or promoting their health, and they have led to a huge increase in drug prescribing (BMJ 2000;321:783). Isn't this just another direct-to-consumer advert that will serve mainly to profit the drug manufacturer? No, says Saporta. “This is a public service education campaign, responding to women's need for information. We received no funding from the manufacturer, but raised the money from private foundations.” And, unlike a direct-to-consumer advert, there is no mention of the drug's trade name or of the manufacturer.
Two of largest pro-choice groups in America, Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), told me that antiabortion activists had prevented women from finding out about the drug.
Saporta agrees. “The antiabortionists are trying to frighten women with medical misinformation,” she said. “They have been talking about how dangerous RU-486 is when, in fact, the trials show 12 years of safe and effective experience. We want women to have accurate medical information.”
Operation Rescue is, not surprisingly, opposed to the advert. Troy Newman, director of the Las Vegas based Operation Rescue West, said that it merely showed how “women have been empowered to kill their own pre-born [sic] children.”
But it is not just the antiabortion activists who are opposing the mifepristone advert. One high profile women's magazine, Redbook, which is owned by the Hearst Corporation and which has a circulation of 2.2 million, is refusing to run it. Redbook's editor in chief, Lesley Jane Seymour, declined to speak to the BMJ but passed me on to her corporate communications spokesman, Paul Luthringer. “Redbook has the right not to run this ad,” he said, “based on the publisher's wishes.”
Redbook is the only magazine that has turned down the advert, possibly because it does not want to upset its socially conservative readership, but its refusal may well backfire. Its editor, said Saporta, “is believed to be pro-choice, and the fact that she has refused to run it has caused an even bigger story.”
Despite abortion being legal in the United States, there are huge barriers facing women who want one. In 86% of counties there is no physician to provide abortions because antiabortionists have harassed, injured, and even killed health professionals. However, if the mifepristone campaign is successful it should go some way towards redressing the balance and supporting women's reproductive freedom and choices.
In case you're in any doubt about what the National Abortion Federation is up against, just listen to Troy Newman's chilling words to the BMJ about Operation Rescue's next campaign: “When we find out where RU-486 is being distributed, we are going to expose the doctors who provide it as the murderers that they are.”
Figure.
NAF
Empowering: the mifepristone ad