Pro –life.
What Image does that word bring to mind? Placard waving ‘fanatics’ or warm caring individuals? For one women on the phone, the image I snow warm and caring. Late one August night in 1991, Marilyn (not her real name) saw an ad on TV offering to help pregnant women.
“ I was scheduled to have an abortion,” she says, “but today my daughter is alive.” The ad sponsored by Alliance for Life (Ontario) led her to call a number and eventually she was paired with Helen, “someone who was there for her” throughout her pregnancy.
The love she felt was so genuine that she introduced Helen to a pregnant friend also scheduled for abortion. “your ad saved two babies,” she tells Jaqui Eisen.
For Ms. Eisen, this phone call came as a poignant reward. She helped to co ordinate the 1991 Alliance for Life (Ontario) pro-life ad campaign which placed the advertisement Marilyn saw on T.V.
The campaign, using radio and bus shelters as well as T.V., reaches over three million people with the pro-life message.
“Most people,” stated Eisen, “base their image of pro-life on what they see in the news media. Unfortunately, the media has had a history or pro-abortion bias.”
Fighting a media-generated negative image has been long and frustrating battle for pro-life people.
The excitement generated by last year’s ads and the knowledge that pro-life ads do save babies and help their mothers has led Eisen to work on a new campaign that could conceivably reach all of Ontario with a life-affirming message.
The new campaign will affirm that all members of the human family are worthy of love, care and protection. Using the slogan “Love them Both,” the ads will focus on the beauty of the preborn child and the need to support those in need. Each ad will include a 1-800 counselling number.
The campaign, scheduled for the fall of 1992, will include broadcasting T.V. ads across Ontario and purchasing radio, bus shelter, newspaper and possibly billboard ad space in specifically targeted centres.
“The central message of the Gospel is Christ’s gift of abundant life. It is our responsibility as Christians to share this message of life and hope to the world,” Eisen concludes. This project will give Canadian Christians an opportunity to do precisely that.
