Category Archives: Minnesota

Land of 10,000 Billboards

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The billboards are as plentiful as birch trees in Minnesota.
“Face it. I had Eyes, Ears, and even my Tongue 28 days from Conception.”
“God knew my soul before I was born.”
“Adoption can be a Life-Saver.”
The ads feature photographs of adorable babies and are impossible to miss even if you’re powering down the highway at 70 miles per hour.  These billboards are the work Prolife Across America, a Christian organization that makes the claim that it has been “saving babies for 20 years.”

I’m not going to say much about abortion here.  Hilary Clinton is the politician that makes the most sense to me with her “safe, legal, and rare” philosophy. I’m a girl who got pregnant in 1969 while attending Catholic school in a town so Catholic public school wasn’t even an option. Abortion was not on my list of considerations. And now all these years later,  I have to say, I’m relieved it wasn’t–for me.

It’s the mention of adoption on these prolife billboards that I’m concerned with.
“2 Million Couples wait to adopt.”
“God made me! Mom and Dad Adopted me!”
“If you’re not ready to be a Daddy, let someone who is.”
I feel a little crazy at these slogans which promote adoption as the sole alternative to abortion.  I find it curious that mothers do not merit a mention equivalent to the “If you’re not ready to be a Daddy” campaign–in fact there’s no mention of the mothers (not even in the archives of past campaigns) at all.

It seems like shame’s role in the pregnancy/abortion/adoption drama should have played out by now.  But I don’t think it has.

I’m not a pro-lifer, but if I were and my mission was saving babies and I believed that God had entrusted me with that work, my campaign would go like this:
“If you’re not ready to be a Mommy, let us help you get ready. Parenting classes and cash subsidies   available!”
“Thinking of abortion or adoption? They both hurt. Let us help you keep your baby.”
“Prochoice means More Choices. Keep your baby. Daycare and parenting classes available.”
Of course I’d have another component to the ad campaign too:
“Sex. Everybody does it. Be safe. Be sane. Be satisfied.”
“Take control of your Birth Control. 
Or how about this?  “DEATH TO SHAME.  It makes babies and then kills them.”
And of course I wonder about the financial relationships between the anti-abortion and adoption forces.  If the prolifers and adoption agencies are in the conjugal bed, a plague of shame on both their houses.