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How feminist: Emergency contraception ad pits babies against shoes and lipstick

This ad for free emergency contraception comes to us from Great Britain’s National Health Service, and it caught the eye of Michael Davis, U.S. editor of the Catholic Herald, among others.

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Yes … what sane woman would ever want a baby when she could be spending the money on shoes and makeup?

We get what they were going for, but Davis is absolutely right: the ad treats babies as obstacles to self-gratification; because, of course, mothers could never afford both shoes and a baby. Babies ruin everything that way.

But women love shoes. Who would trade shoes for a beautiful baby?

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Oh, it’s real. There’s even a piece in today’s Daily Mail about a commuter blasting the ad for being sexist: “The fact that it went through so many people before being displayed is another thing that made me so mad. The person who designed it, signed it off, printed it and distributed it. Did nobody stop and think ‘are we really going ahead with this?'”

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On the other hand …


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