British parents are up in arms about a commercial for
Levonelle, an over-the-counter emergency contraception pill. After the commercial was aired on three
TV channels, hundreds of parents called radio shows to express their outrage.
"Even
though it was shown after 9pm my teenage daughters were watching,” one father
said. “The worst thing is it makes it seem normal to go and get this pill.
We've crossed a moral line with this."
The commercial depicts a casual sex encounter gone wrong—a girl
lies in bed next to a slobby musician; a bubble over her forehead, creased with
worry, says, “The ‘condom split’ one.” Her worries are intensified by a
screaming baby on the bus next to her—then assuaged by a friendly pharmacist.
There is something undeniably off-putting about the commercial—the
cheesy, upbeat music, the cuteness of the animation depicting an event that is the opposite of cute. But it’s a 30-second commercial, not an informative,
honest discussion of what constitutes a healthy sex life, since that kind of
talk is, uh, the parent’s job.
Unsurprisingly but nonetheless idiotically, anti-choice advocates
have argued that the pharmaceutical company is promoting abortion, to which a
spokesperson for Bayer Schering responded, "Levonelle One Step is not
legally or scientifically an abortifacient. It is not effective once the
process of implantation has begun and will not interrupt an established
pregnancy."
Although most of the parents who complained about this ad
focused on its allegedly casual message about sex rather than on abortion, it
seems to me that if you support access to emergency contraception, you support allowing
TV stations to air this ad.
What would you do if you were watching TV with your kids and
this commercial came on?
Image: Brand Republic
