People are still talking about Super Bowl LIV long after the big night. What the mainstream media is not covering is the powerful Pro-Life ad that the network refused to air. Despite producing a high-quality commercial and raising the funds to purchase time in the highly-coveted Super Bowl ad slots, Faces of Choice says their ad was not aired and the group has yet to receive an explanation.
The Pro-Life ad at the center of the controversy the media are ignoring has been years in the making. Lyric Gillett told Texas Right to Life in an interview that her idea for a Super Bowl ad came when God woke her up in the middle of the night four years ago. Since that time the activist, founder executive director of the organization Faces of Choice, has worked tirelessly to bring her vision to reality.
Gillett, who has been involved in Pro-Life advocacy from a young age, realized that every civil rights movement of modern times has focused on the faces and stories of the victims as a way of breaking through the inhumanity and injustice of the status quo. Abortion, which has killed more than 61 million preborn babies in 47 years of legal abortion in our nation, has been difficult to combat because the victims have no voices. Except, Gillett realized, for those victims who have survived. Gillett reached out to abortion survivor Melissa Ohden and began seeking other people who were supposed to have died in an abortion procedure but survived.
The search was not easy, because Gillett knew that they needed survivors with immutable documentation—medical records or adoption reports with details about the abortion. For decades, abortion survivors have been dismissed as make believe and fabricated. They are anything but and Gillett wanted to highlight stories that could be verified beyond a doubt. Though there is a network of thousands of abortion survivors, not many are willing to subject themselves and their families to the horrendous public treatment Pro-Life advocates so often receive at the hands of the abortion mob. Nonetheless, many abortion survivors were eager to share their stories and be part of Faces of Choice.
Gillett told Texas Right to Life she has a commitment to the survivors who have courageously shared their stories. She said, “I will not rest and I will not be content until mainstream America acknowledges their existence.” Once the average American knows that abortion survivors exist and can identify individuals with real stories who have survived, the argument for abortion is destroyed. When people associate the euphemism “choice” with the face of an abortion survivor, many people will no longer be able to support the killing of preborn human beings.
The faces of these survivors are powerful, perhaps the only force more powerful than the lies the abortion industry has spent half a century inventing. Our culture has misled many to believe that abortion is “women’s empowerment,” “freedom,” “choice,” and a “right.” These euphemisms distract from the horrific violence and injustice of abortion. In the advertisement Gillett produced the survivors ask simply and hauntingly, “Can you look me in the eye and tell me that I shouldn’t be alive?”
Faces of Choice never received an answer as to why their ad was never officially approved and could not air during the Super Bowl. Insiders speculate that the ad was never officially rejected so that the Fox network could save face. Gillett says the group submitted storyboards and began compliance with the network’s legal team last summer. In the months leading up to the big night, there were additional requirements and stipulations that continually delayed approval. While Faces of Choice worked to jump through additional hoops, ad slots sold out, and the group was repeatedly told there was no space, even as more opened up.
Watching the Super Bowl halftime show, there seems to be another possible explanation for why a powerful Pro-Life ad was barred from airing on one of the biggest nights in television. The theme of the halftime show was female empowerment. Sadly, our culture has come to see women’s empowerment as synonymous with the ability to end the lives of their preborn children. We’ve been told that children keep women from their dreams and that abortion is necessary “healthcare.” With this context, Jennifer Lopez entering the stage on a model of the Empire State building wrapped in pink seems likely a reference to major buildings in New York being lit up in pink to “celebrate” the passage of some of the most extreme anti-Life legislation our nation has ever seen.
The faces of abortion survivors destroy the false claims of empowerment and “freedom” that abortion offers. Abortion does not advance women; abortion ends the lives of their children, violently and unjustly. The fact that major networks have refused to acknowledge the Pro-Life commercial is an indication of how powerful the faces of survivors are. Although the story has received coverage from news sources like the Washington Examiner, the Washington Times, and Breitbart, the mainstream has yet to say anything about the apparent censorship.
Faces of Choice is still resolved in the mission to bring the truth about abortion to the largest audience in America. Gillett said, “Until the face is synonymous with ‘choice,’ I will not rest.”
Gillett told Texas Right to Life that Faces of Choice has already approached CBS to begin the process of getting a powerful Pro-Life ad approved for the next Super Bowl. In the meantime, Faces of Choice continues to reach people online and through any means possible. The group is considering using billboards and other media to reach a wider audience and is also considering purchasing ads in the Olympics. And the mission is not limited to the United States; Pro-Lifers in Greece, Ireland, and several other countries are working to translate and adapt the commercial to air in their countries.
You can support the mission of Faces of Choice by sharing the stories of abortion survivors. The mainstream media has demonstrated their loyalty to the abortion status quo. We are the ones who must share these stories. Share the videos on social media; share them with friends and family.