We have reported to you in our previous newsletter and in our Christmas report of our plans to place ads in shopping malls.  We had been approached by a salesman from a major advertising firm to place ads in the malls.  The ads are 40 x 50 inches and are placed in cases in the malls, protected from defacing by a glass covering.

We decided on an ad that would show pictures of women who have had abortions, accompanied by a quote from each of them telling of the affect abortion had in their life.  In each case, we placed a note of documentation from research that identified these various consequences of abortion.  The theme of the poster was “The Faces of Choice.”

We were fortunate in being able to find five women who were willing to provide a picture for us and also, one man who had been involved in a pregnancy that was aborted.  I’m sure you must realize that this willingness to have their picture placed on a poster in a mall showed considerable courage on the part of these women and the man.

And now, as Paul Harvey would say, “Here is the rest of the story.”  We signed a contract for three months in each of two malls.  I visited both of the malls to insure that the posters had been placed in good places for visibility.  The Ford City Mall placed the ad promptly, and it has remained throughout the three month contract and is currently still in place a full month after the contract has expired.  The North Riverside Mall first placed our poster in an obscure place between two outside doors that would be seen by very few people.  I requested that it be placed in another position, but when I visited the mall again, it was nowhere in sight.

I checked with our advertising agent and then subsequently spoke with the manager of the North Riverside Mall.  She advised me that the ad had been removed because she considered it “unacceptable.”  Someone had complained.  When I questioned if one person’s complaint was sufficient to have paid advertisements removed, she then told me that actually three people had complained.  It is clear to me that it was the manager who found the ad “unacceptable” because there was no problem at all with our poster at the Ford City Mall.  Our advertising agent then tried to place the ad in the Charlestown Mall in St. Charles and it was taken down within an hour.   Apparently it was also unacceptable in that mall.

When I spoke with the manager at North Riverside, I asked why it is unacceptable for a woman to say that she regrets her abortion.  She simply said that it was her right to make that decision and that she didn’t want anyone to be offended.  If I had told her that I was unhappy with a purchase I had made of another advertised product, do you think that ad would have been removed?  This isn’t about people being offended, this is about abortion.   No one is allowed to have any negative feelings about abortion or say they regret that decision and that abortion has caused untold grief in their lives.  This affair has been another first hand experience of bias in the media and the efforts to censor the message in any other public place as well.

We plan to continue in our efforts to find a mall where the message will be accepted.  In the meantime, we have had a smaller poster of 20 x 25 inches made and have already sold almost a dozen of those posters at a price of $10.00 each.  They are suitable for posting in church vestibules, high schools or colleges.  There are no graphic images contained on the posters which are simply educational information about abortion and the suffering of those who have been involved in them.  We believe they could be part of a positive effort for pro-life student groups to educate the student population on their campus.  Think about it!

Mary Anne Hackett