October 29, 2001

Catholic bishops testing ad campaign on abortion
___By Mark O'Keefe
___Religion News Service
___WASHINGTON (RNS)--Encouraged by polls showing that Americans are unsettled about the extent to which abortion is permitted, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is test-marketing an advertising campaign so sleek and subtle the public may not realize who is behind it.
___The campaign will challenge abortion rights supporters in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey to answer the question "Have we gone too far?"
___The ads have no religious content. They give no clue that the Washington-based bishops' conference is behind them. Neither does the campaign's Web site, www.secondlookproject.org.
___If successful, both the ads and the Internet presence could be used nationwide at a time when the anti-abortion movement is gaining ground in the court of public opinion, said a spokeswoman for the bishops' conference.
___"What's new about this is we are presenting a couple of facts in a non-emotional and intelligent way," said Cathleen Cleaver, director of planning and information in the bishops' pro-life office. "We're not trying to provoke an emotional response but an intellectual response."
___ The campaign's look and feel contrast with the shock approach of others in the anti-abortion movement, illustrating a divide in strategy and tactics among those who oppose Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in 1973.
___ One Catholic print ad shows a 20-something woman with a nine-month calendar lightly superimposed over her torso. The text says: "Nine months. The amount of time the Supreme Court says it's legal to have an abortion. Abortion. Have we gone too far?"
___A radio ad has piano music playing in the background, with a woman saying: "In America you can choose to have an abortion at any time, for any reason. Because of that, one out of every four pregnancies now ends in abortion."
___The bishops' media blitz began Sept. 4. Initially, plans were for 34 billboards at bus shelters, 143 ads on commuter rail cars and continuous radio spots on five stations. But on Monday, Cleaver learned that the City of Philadelphia had joined at least one suburb in notifying the bishops that they would not permit the bus shelter ads.
___The bishops are spending $250,000 in Philadelphia, hoping that regional Catholic dioceses will be inspired to use the materials in their own communities while picking up the tab, Cleaver said.
___ The leader of one anti-abortion group criticized the approach as too soft.
___"The bishops think they can win this on the cheap," said Gregg Cunningham, director of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, an Anaheim, Calif.-based group that has just launched a national campaign featuring huge photos of aborted fetuses on semitrailers. "They think they can win this without upsetting or offending anyone. They think they can win this without even associating themselves with opposition to abortion."
___Asked directly why the bishops' group was not named in the ads, Cleaver said the aim was simplicity, and that additional content would clutter them. She suggested that if the conference had something to hide, it would not issue a news release announcing the campaign.
___Catholics for a Free Choice, a Washington-based group that has tracked and opposed Catholicism's anti-abortion effort for 28 years, called the ads unprecedented.
___"The bishops are hardly about hiding their light under a bushel," said Jon O'Brien, the group's vice president, using a verse from the New Testament. "So it strikes me as incredibly odd that they would choose to hide that they are behind these ads. I've not seen that before, ever. It's far more reminiscent of the political campaigning we have seen in a very different arena."
___Cleaver, however, said the church was softening neither its stand against abortion nor its identification with the issue. She argued that the new campaign's target audience--broad, secular and mostly non-Catholic--required a different communication strategy.
___"Our message has absolutely nothing to do with the Catholic faith," she said.

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