“We’re having a fetus!” “You want to feel the fetus kick?” These are some of the statements the latest ad from Focus on the Family uses to address abortion in its own way, challenging the term “fetus” used to address preborn babies.
The faith-based organization launched the “It’s a Baby” campaign on Wednesday, just days before the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Supreme Court ruling that effectively reversed the nearly 50-year precedent of nationwide access to abortion established by Roe v. Wade.
According to Focus on the Family’s news outlet “Daily Citizen,” the group’s president, Jim Daly, saw it as the perfect time to join in the “millions of conversations” he anticipates will take place regarding the “sanctity of human life” in the coming weeks.
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The ad begins by showing a couple trading the results of a pregnancy test. The woman excitedly exclaims to her husband, “It’s positive! We’re having a fetus!”
The scene transitions to another couple in an ultrasonography room, where a sonographer glides the transducer over the expecting mother’s stomach. The mother, viewing the ultrasound image on the screen, reaches out to it and says, “Hi, fetus.”
Several other illustrations follow, leading up to one where a little girl admonishes her parents for using the term.
“Um, it’s a baby,” she says.
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“Even the Mayo Clinic’s website, in an article taking prospective parents through the weekly development of their child, uses ‘baby’ to describe that child 37 times, from the moment of fertilization. Our country’s most heralded medical institution knows it’s a baby. We want more Americans to realize that truth, too,” Daly said.
“We’re hoping to reach people who will be struck by the truth the spot depicts that it is, indeed, a baby,” Daly said, per an email sent to Fox News Digital. “We’re always looking for compelling ways, even unexpected ways, to get the country talking about life. And with the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs being June 24, this was the perfect moment to add this important perspective to the national conversation.”
He argued that culture has gotten “too comfortable” using “antiseptic scientific terms” to “dehumanize a child in the womb.”
“We wanted to challenge that by plainly and simply showing – in situations we’re all familiar with – that it’s a baby. And to call it anything else just doesn’t make sense.”
In the comments, the video received overwhelming support from pro-lifers, with some praising it as a “common sense” message and others labeling it “great” or “magnificent.”
One wrote in part, “What a wonderful illustration that even children grasp the fundamental truth…it’s a baby.”
Another said, “Brilliant. No one can watch this and think the first 50 seconds sounds like the way we actually talk about babies.”
Since the Supreme Court ruled against a constitutional right to abortion nationwide last June, the issue has become a focal point for many state legislatures as some look to enact restrictions and others – including California and Washington State – pledge to guarantee access to abortion.