Parents Enraged By Emergency Contraception Commercial

British parents are up in arms about a commercial for Levonelle, an over-the-counter emergency contraception pill. After the commercial was aired on three TV channels, hundreds of parents called radio shows to express their outrage.

“Even though it was shown after 9pm my teenage daughters were watching,” one father said. “The worst thing is it makes it seem normal to go and get this pill. We’ve crossed a moral line with this.”

The commercial depicts a casual sex encounter gone wrong—a girl lies in bed next to a slobby musician; a bubble over her forehead, creased with worry, says, “The ‘condom split’ one.” Her worries are intensified by a screaming baby on the bus next to her—then assuaged by a friendly pharmacist.

There is something undeniably off-putting about the commercial—the cheesy, upbeat music, the cuteness of the animation depicting an event that is the opposite of cute. But it’s a 30-second commercial, not an informative, honest discussion of what constitutes a healthy sex life, since that kind of talk is, uh, the parent’s job.

Unsurprisingly but nonetheless idiotically, anti-choice advocates have argued that the pharmaceutical company is promoting abortion, to which a spokesperson for Bayer Schering responded, “Levonelle One Step is not legally or scientifically an abortifacient. It is not effective once the process of implantation has begun and will not interrupt an established pregnancy.”

Although most of the parents who complained about this ad focused on its allegedly casual message about sex rather than on abortion, it seems to me that if you support access to emergency contraception, you support allowing TV stations to air this ad.

What would you do if you were watching TV with your kids and this commercial came on?

Image: Brand Republic