What was intended to be an innocent and humorous Super Bowl 50 Doritos commercial has been criticized by the National Abortion Rights Action League of using "antichoice tactics of humanizing fetuses."
The 30-second commercial features a pregnant mother getting an ultrasound at nine months while the father of the baby is over on the side of the room eating a bag of nacho cheese Doritos.
"Really? You are eating Doritos?" the mom asks the dad.
"He is eating Doritos at my ultrasound," the mother then tells the OB/GYN as she conducts the ultrasound. "Do you see what I have to deal with?"
As the father snacks on a bag of chips, he notices that his unborn son is reaching out in the womb, grabbing for the snack. The father then proceeds to wave a Dorito chip over the mother's belly, and the baby is seen on the monitor moving along with the motion of the Dorito.
After the father moves the chip in such a way that causes the baby to kick inside the womb, the mother grabs the chip and throws it across the room. Viewers are left to infer that the baby flies out of the womb after the chip as the mother, father and doctor all begin to scream.
Immediately after the commercial, the NARAL took to Twitter to express their disapproval that the advertisement used "antichoice tactics of humanizing fetuses."
"#NotBuyingIt," the NARAL tweet reads. "that @Doritos ad using #antichoice tactic of humanizing fetuses & sexist tropes of dads as clueless & moms as uptight. #SB50."
Following the tweet, hundreds of people took to social media to slam the NARAL for what many deemed a "ludicrous" criticism of the commercial.
"'Humanizing fetuses'? What is Mom pregnant with? A potato? A duck? Nope - a human. Say it with me. She's a baby," tweeted Doc Washburn in response.
"@NARAL 's ridiculous allegation that an obvious late term pregnancy is merely a 'fetus' makes me want to buy @Doritos," added Lisa Sargese.
Writing for The Federalist, pro-life columnist Mollie Hemingway also weighed in on the controversy: "It's easy to mock the pro-choice activists' tweets and headlines deriding depictions of the beauty of human lives that result from a good sex life, but it also speaks to a deeper truth. There is no art or beauty in the pro-choice message, which is about ending human lives after they've begun and at their most nascent. Abortion is dark and sterile, even when it's not performed in Gosnell-like conditions. The pro-life message is artistically overwhelming in its combination of reality and possibility."
She added, "Still, NARAL should have known that the best course of action when faced with the beauty of human life is simply to be quiet, not showing the world how much it rejects science and wonder."
Melissa Conway, Texas Right to Life's director of external relations, praised the ad for "clearly capturing the human emotions and reactions of the preborn child...Doritos acknowledges the awareness, feelings, and humanity each tiny life possesses."
Instead of engaging the NARAL, Doritos simply tweeted an animated GIF later in the game showing the same ultrasound baby moving back and forth, with the label "Touchdown Dance."
Here is the Doritos Super Bowl 50 commercial:
