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Lysa Britt

Professor Collins

ENGL 1301

28 November 2017

Abortion

The "Banning Abortions Endangers Womens Health" by Guttmacher Institute

advertisement was created to bring awareness about the factors of what women face when

abortions are banned where they live. It gives statistics and facts on the advertisement regarding

banning abortions. It is a blue ad with letters in multiple fonts and used two different colored

fonts. There is also a map of the world in various shades of blue along with a key of percentages

rates. This ad targets voters who are against abortions and to persuade them to acknowledge

these facts. Guttmacher Institute is an organization that was created in 1968 as a Center for

Family Planning Program Development. According to the Guttmacher Institute ad, banning

abortions will only make women go through unsafe routes to obtain an unwanted pregnancy.

They created the advertisement to make people aware of the dangers, and why the procedure

should not be banned. Logos, symbolism, pathos, and ethos in the abortion advertisement

provided proof that banning abortion is dangerous to womens health globally.

Logos is used in this advertisement to persuade the audience, abortion is about more than

a pro-life pro-choice debate. From the ad by Guttmacher Institute, shockingly over 220 million

females from across the globe do not have access to birth control which leads to the statistic that,

47,000 women die yearly from complications of unsafe abortions millions more are injured.

Guttmacher Institute advocates for womens right to be able to make the decision if they are

thinking about aborting a fetus. They state on their website over 55 million abortions were
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performed worldwide and nearly 7 million women had complications from the procedure which

most of these issues would have been prevented with the likes of modern birth control (Induced

Abortion Worldwide.). In some American states where abortion is illegal, victims who become

pregnant from rape are hopelessly forced by law to have the child, which can be challenging to

cope with. With having the facts and statistics shown in the ad, it will open the eyes of the

audience to those who fear the effects of banning abortion. Women in developing regions who

elect to have this procedure may not be choosing it for selfish reasons but the lack of available

preventive healthcare. The logos in the advertisement does have the greatest impact on this

publication to establish how it affects womens health all around the world and how they should

receive safe healthcare.

Symbolism is used in this image to highlight the key facts to captivate the viewers

attention. There are numbers as well as words on the image, some of the numbers and words are

larger and in orange to emphasize the vast number of woman that are affected by abortion. The

map of the world is also shown to the audience with different shades of blue to indicate the rates

of impacted countries. When looking at the image, viewers will notice the seriousness because

the word die is in larger print and bold, most humans are petrified of death. Utilizing these

techniques draws the attention and makes voters that are for banning abortion. Symbolism

intrigues people to demonstrate the influence of the procedure and how it could be deadly.

Pathos is applied in this visual to provoke the crowds attention and focused on their

emotions. People will read the details of this advertisement and sympathize with the women who

are in danger. In third world countries, the percentages of unsafe abortions are disturbingly high

and problematic. Unsafe abortions rates remain higher in regions where the laws are stricter and

banning the procedure will not eliminate the issue but only to cause deadly consequences
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(Induced Abortion Worldwide.). Death is a strong subject, Guttmacher illustrates clearly on

the number of women who have died or have been severely impacted by poverty-stricken

regions. They effectively used alarming numbers to emphasize their focal point to scare the

audience. Some people will be shocked by the rates of women are in danger being in the

millions. The pathos in this advertisement pulls on the heartstrings of the viewers to make them

aware of the technicalities of the affected.

Ethos is created in the advertisement to make themselves trustworthy bombarding the

viewer with large numbers and statistics. Guttmacher Institute is stamped on the bottom left-hand

corner of the visual, and their website www.guttmacher.com is visible on it as well. Once

entering their website, it states they use credible research to create family planning policies. The

ad itself seems credible because of its simplicity, it is direct information making them

trustworthy. By canvassing the advertisement, the audience will trust the facts the visual

provides. An American government agency, National Center for Biotechnology Information

(NCBI) is a database for biomedical research. An article written by Ruth Dixon-Mueller on the

NCBI website states, "The US Government's decision to refuse to fund family planning

programs that include abortion represents a major setback to women's reproductive rights and

has forced many private voluntary organizations in the Third World to choose between

continuing to provide safe, legal abortion and losing their funding" (Dixon-Mueller). Family

planning policies that Guttmacher Institute creates and lobbies actual help the undeveloped

world. The health of women around the world is endangered and the ethos of the ad

demonstrates it.

Guttmacher Institute is successful at luring the audience in the ad by applying the

appropriate modes of persuasion. They gave key evidence on the health risk women could and
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have endured when lawmakers ban abortions, they also provide a solution to lower percentage

rates the need of the procedure and that can be done by providing the undeveloped regions forms

of modern birth control and healthcare. People who normally oppose abortions they seem to

dismiss the pregnant women and do not acknowledge the mother's health. There focus is

habitually on the fetus, whether it is because of political or religious views, which suggest they

should have tunnel vision on the issue of abortion. This visual shifted the controversial matter of

the fetus' life to the mother and her health, which constitute the viewers to give the topic of

abortion an alternate approach to their perspective.

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Work Cited

Dixon-Mueller, R. Abortion Policy and Women's Health in Developing

Countries.International Journal of Health Services : Planning, Administration,

Evaluation., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Apr. 1990,

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2332264.

Induced Abortion Worldwide. Guttmacher Institute, 11 Oct. 2017,

www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-worldwide.