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Pro-Life TV Ads Aim For "Muddled Middle'

How can we change our culture and end abortion in America?

One important way is to reach a target audience with well-designed TV commercials, said Thomas Cronquist.

“Many, if not most Americans draw their ideas about culture from TV,” he told pro-lifers at the Baltimore Archdiocese Respect Life Conference November 13.

Mr. Cronquist is the Washington, D.C./Baltimore media market regional director for Vitae Caring Foundation, which has developed and market-tested a series of television ads aimed at converting a specific group of women.

Vitae’s research on women’s attitudes toward abortion revealed three groups:  women who believe consistently in pro-life values; women who are entrenched in pro-abortion thinking; and the target audience, the “muddled middle.”

This last group, said Cronquist, “feel that abortion is morally wrong, but that women still have a ‘right to choose.’  They are susceptible to persuasion; they can be moved to a consistent pro-life position.”

Using market research and consumer psychology, Vitae has developed a series of TV ads that appeal in a positive way to women’s emotions.

“The ads don’t challenge the values of pro-choice women in an ‘in your face’ way; they challenge them to think about the inconsistencies in their pro-abortion stand, make them think, ‘There’s a problem in my pro-choice position that needs to be resolved.’”

The foundation has run these ads in campaigns in major TV market areas such as Denver, Philadelphia and Seattle, then measured their effectiveness by graphing the change in abortion rates, surveying changes in attitudes toward abortion, or tallying the increase in calls to an 800 phone number in the ad.

Encouraged by the positive results these ad campaigns have achieved, Vitae’s goal is to run similar campaigns in the top 25 markets across the country.

“Our goal is to make abortion unthinkable in America,” said Cronquist.  

“Once we make it unthinkable, it will be made illegal.”