NBC Rejects Pro-Life Ad for Super Bowl

NBC has rejected this pro-life ad from CatholicVote.org for the Super Bowl.

It's the same ad that ran on BET during its coverage of Barack Obama's inauguration.

Watch the ad that NBC has deemed unfit for the Super Bowl audience.

Obama's Life Story Now an Anti-Abortion Ad

In the 41-second ad, sponsored by catholicvote.org, a camera slowly zooms in on a fetus in a womb as these words appear on the screen: "This child's future is a broken home. He will be abandoned by his father. His single mother will struggle to raise him. Despite the hardships he will endure this child will become the 1st African-American President." The ad ends with a photograph of President Obama and this message: "Life: Imagine the Potential."

From WorldNetDaily:

[A]n NBC representative said the network is not interested in the commercial.

After days of discussion, the representative told Fidelis that NBC and the NFL will not run commercials involving "political advocacy or issues," Fidelis said in a statement today.

The video has become increasingly popular since it first ran on Black Entertainment Television in Chicago on Inauguration Day.

Fidelis President Brian Burch told the Washington Times that NBC was working with the company to purchase a commercial package in the nation's top 10 markets and four additional cities at the cost of $1.5 million to $1.8 million.

"We put out the call to our members and large pro-life benefactors who told us they would put up significant dollars to make this happen," Burch said. "I was told the ad was approved and then there were a number of attorneys working on it."

But he said NBC later reversed its decision.

"Then I was told they didn't want to run political or advocacy ads," Burch told the Times.

He claims that while NBC told his organization it would not allow advocacy ads, the network told PETA something entirely different when it rejected the group's sexually explicit commercial showing women having intimate moments with vegetables.

"There's no doubt that PETA is an advocacy group," Burch said in his statement. "NBC rejected PETA's ad for another reason altogether."

An e-mail posted on PETA's website from Victoria Morgan, vice president of advertising standards for NBC Universal, said: "The PETA spot submitted to Advertising Standards depicts a level of sexuality exceeding our standards."

Morgan provided "edits that need to be made" before the spot could be finalized to run during the Super Bowl.

"NBC claims it doesn't allow advocacy ads, but that's not true," Burch said. "They were willing to air an ad by PETA if they would simply tone down the sexual suggestiveness. Our ad is far less provocative, and hardly controversial by comparison."

He said, unlike the salacious PETA commercial, the pro-life ad is clean and has a positive message.

"There is nothing objectionable in this positive, life-affirming advertisement," Burch said. "We show a beautiful ultrasound, something NBC's parent company GE has done for years. We congratulate Barack Obama on becoming the first African-American President. And we simply ask people to imagine the potential of every human life."

Apparently, NBC finds it too threatening to run an ad that asks people to imagine the potential of every human life.

NBC's claim that it's not allowing advocacy ads is crap.

What would you call Matt Lauer's LIVE White House interview with Barack Obama, scheduled to air about one hour before kickoff?

If NBC is being consistent, there should be nothing said in that interview that could be interpreted as any sort of political advocacy. That's not going to happen. No way.

I hope NBC execs have warned Bruce Springsteen not to say or sing anything remotely political. No advocacy allowed on this Super Bowl broadcast.

I don't want to hear any lame anti-Sarah Palin or anti-George W. Bush cracks from Democrat loud-mouthpiece Keith Olbermann. I don't want to hear one slobbering word from him advocating Obama's politics and dissing conservatives.

When NBC rejected the "Life: Imagine the potential" ad, it set the bar very high for the Super Bowl broadcast to be an advocacy-free zone.

NBC set itself up to fail.