By Dave Andrusko
Once again, I saw what I’m guessing will be the most powerful, if indirect, pro-life message I will encounter today while jogging on the treadmill.
I was able to read the chyron that ran underneath an ad for a car. Even without hearing the music, it was easy to sense the intimacy of a very pregnant young woman and her husband in an ad captioned, “Never Too Early.”
As it turns out, this was the abbreviated version; the longer version, which I looked at this afternoon, was even more powerful.
The message—after all, this is a commercial—is that some things will last a long time. Here’s how the car dealer explains what is taking place:
An expecting couple is anxious to welcome their child to the big, amazing world and to get a head start with their Subaru Outback. As Julie Doiron’s “Beneath the Leaves” plays, the pregnant mother stands in front of crashing waves to show her baby the ocean before the couple drives to a forest and walks hand-in-hand while listening to the sounds all around them. With so much they want to show their baby, they need a car that will last long enough for them to see it all. Over a decade later, the family pulls up to the same ocean spot in their Outback and the mother and father let the daughter race to explore it all.
“There is so much they want to show their baby…” Indeed.
In the extended version, the mom makes a series of comments that illustrate how close, how bound up, mother and unborn child actually are.
For example, it begins with her announcing to her baby girl, “This is the ocean.” It is our ocean–yours, mine, and dad’s.
Next, while sitting on a chair on the beach, she is listening, presumably to music, through headphones. She places the headphones on either side of her abdomen to give her unborn baby an early lesson in music appreciation.
Later, while they are driving, she joshes, “She definitely likes spicy,” and she and her husband laugh.” What the mom eats, so, too, does her baby.
Then, deep in a forest, Mom looks up into the sky. “Just listen,” she advises. She is drinking in the beauty that surrounds them both and wants to share it.
Then, back in the car, she asks, “What else can we show her?” To which her husband smiles and responds, “It’s a big world.”
I understand it’s only a commercial to convince you and me to buy an automobile. But this one-minute-long ad packs in a litany of messages.
· We are in this together, Mother, unborn child, and father.
· What affects one of us is not confined to just one of us.
· Love lasts far longer than any car will. Love lasts a lifetime.
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