I feel somewhat as if I’m taking a stroll in the middle of a DMZ. However, in between the flares of heated tempers there have been some good points made, and I’d like to bring up a few more for examination. Gentlemen, please be kind – my flame retardant gear is on backorder. 
To get back to the original OP, I simply object to it as I do any form of persuasion which is wholly emotional in nature and which relies on either graphic pictures or highly slanted language to make its point. The anti-choice campaign is not the only one who does this; it just happened to be behind the paid announcement referred to in the OP. It seems emotionally manipulative to me, and encourages decisions which are not based upon logic, but its converse. That’s a big fat IMHO; I don’t expect anyone else to either share or agree with it.
(I’d don the flame retardant gear at this point if I could, but I don’t have it, so here goes. 
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The thing that bothers me most about the whole pro-choice/anti-choice debate is the assumptions which inevitably get made on both sides. The second most troubling thing are the ways in which both sides act based upon these assumptions.
One assumption made by both camps is that there is no room for a pro-life person to be pro-choice, and that simply is not so. I know too many people who would themselves not get an abortion who simply do not believe it their place to enforce their beliefs on someone else. I respect them for that.
There are two assumptions which are habitually made by the anti-choice camp which deeply disturb me as someone who believes in choice. The first is that anyone who is pro-choice is, by default, recommending abortion for all situations; the second is that it must follow that anyone who believes that women should have recourse to safe, legal abortions must be doing so because they either place no value on human life or because they believe in encouraging feckless people not to take responsibility for their actions.
I do not recommend abortions be performed as a matter of course for any number of reasons. First and foremost, I believe that both the man and the woman should be responsible enough to use sufficient birth control to keep an unwanted pregnancy from occurring. Secondly, though, the fact is, abortions do pose a hazard for a woman’s future conception. Repeated abortions increase that hazard. Therefore, it is simply not a medically sound or logical avenue to advise. I have yet to talk to anyone who is pro-choice who advocates abortion as a first course of action, and as such, believe that such an assumption is not only unfounded, but does pro-choicers a grave disservice.
I do, however, see that there are a number of situations in which an abortion could and should be offered to a woman. I expounded on one such situation in detail in my previous post; there are others. The problem, however, with legislating abortion is that no matter how broad one tries to make the legislation, someone is going to slip through the cracks. It seems neither fair nor right to potentially deny a citizen of this country access to what could be life-saving treatment simply because the treatment in question happens to be an abortion. Moreover, I am against too many governmental controls over individual choices and individual freedoms. Therefore, a pro-choice stance seems to me to be the most fair to adopt, and thus, that is why I choose to do so.
There has been a great deal of discussion about part of the second assumption which troubles me, that of responsibility. And that, friends, is one I honestly find murky no matter how I look at it.
First, I know that not all women who choose to abort are aborting an unwanted or unplanned child, nor are they necessarily unmarried. It isn’t an instance of getting rid of a responsibility. I know several women who truly wished to have a child, but who, for health reasons, regretfully had to abort. I also see where if a wife became pregnant as a result of a rape, where such a child could destroy a marriage. In any event, it is a fallacy to assume that every single woman who chooses to have an abortion is a feckless person who simply got caught when she skipped taking precautions, and it is unfair to impose legislation based upon such an assumption.
Are there women who have abortions who are not covered by such circumstances? Of course there are. Are there women who think little of having an abortion? I’m sure there are…but I also think that said number are fewer than the anti-choice camp would have people believe.
However, it should be pointed out that there are also women who think nothing of giving birth and abandoning their child, or dumping it upon relatives who may or may not provide a good home for it and continuing on their merry way. The problem of Dumpster babies, in fact, became so prevalent in our area of Texas that the law regarding child abandonment was changed. At one time, a woman could face criminal charges if she left a baby at a hospital, however, in an attempt to reduce the number of children being abandoned in Dumpsters and other public areas, the law now provides that a woman may leave a child in the care of a hospital and not risk being charged. (If anyone wants more details or a cite, tell me, and I’ll get my better half to look up the specific part of that code for me and see if I can find it online.) It seems to me, then, that the underlying problem is not whether or not a woman can have an abortion – it’s whether or not the individual in question has been raised to accept the responsibility of her actions.
Adoption, while a good option, is not necessarily the best option, either. I hear over and over how much of a market there is for adoptive children…but the thing is, that market only exists for certain types of adoptive children. Children of color have a much more difficult time being placed in good homes, and ones who are not healthy or who have birth defects have an even more difficult time. So it’s not quite accurate to say that any child given up for adoption will go to a safe and loving home. There have also been some pretty unscrupulous practices involving agencies which supposedly facilitate adoptions (witness the cluster of a case where the agency sold a child to a both couple in the U.S. one in the U.K., and the whole thing ended up in an ugly legal battle.) That being said, adoption may be great in principle, but it, too, has its drawbacks.
And now we hit the murkiest issue of all, and the one I personally have the hardest time sorting through: responsibility.
I agree that a woman, like any adult, should face the responsibility of her actions. I believe there are lasting consequences no matter what choice she makes, whether or not those consequences are immediately apparent or not. However, while I constantly see people stressing that women should take responsibility for their actions…there is not a whisper as to what responsibility the man who got her pregnant should be required to take.
Child support is not enough; there are entirely too many men who are unable or unwilling to provide such support. Birth control is the responsibility of both parties, the woman did not get herself pregnant, and moreover, there is a possibility that a man can force a woman into unwanted and unprotected intercourse which could result in pregnancy. In all fairness, if we are going to deny women the right to abort, then we must also require an equally draconian measure to enforce responsibility on the other parent. Otherwise, this becomes a form of sexual discrimination.
I also have a great deal of difficulty puzzling through the responsibility issue because I know that our society is far from perfect. In a perfect society, all children would be given an adequate sexual and social education. There would be no misinformation out there to confuse them. They would have ready and easy access to birth control and disease preventive measures.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Teens in particular make decisions based on poor and often erroneous information, and suffer for it. The Internet isn’t helping, either, sad to say – I had occasion to check teen chat rooms not long ago, when my husband and I were deciding what level of internet access we felt comfortable in giving to his eldest son, and the amount of misinformation being bandied about was simply appalling. (Needless to say, he doesn’t get to chat-hop.)
Moreover, young girls in particular are extremely susceptible to emotional pressure, and to be candid, there are a lot of boys out there who apply it in order to get the girl to have sex with them. How many high school seniors did we know who deliberately sought out freshman girls, or even eighth grade girls to date so they could score? How many guys in their early 20’s will pick up on 16 and 17 year olds for the same reason? I am not at all accusing every single man of doing this; far, far from it. But it is prevalent, it does happen, and uninformed children reap the penalty. We can force them to have the children…but then, does that really teach them anything? Does society benefit by giving a 12 or 13 year old the responsibility of motherhood that soon? And again, what of the other who is responsible for the pregnancy?
I wish we had a world where no child was conceived who was not wanted, and no child was born who was not cared for and anxiously awaited. I wish we had a world where rape was unheard of and medical science had the answer to every health concern. But that isn’t our world. In the absence of that perfect world, I advocate a choice because it gives people more flexibility to deal with the circumstances a far less than perfect world can throw at them.