TV Election Ad Airs Photos of Dead Fetuses

Television stations in Indiana and Kentucky, reluctantly following advice from the Federal Communications Commission, on Monday began broadcasting commercials for a congressional candidate that showed photos of dead fetuses.

The ads are for Michael E. Bailey, a foe of abortion who is seeking the Republican Party nomination on May 5 for the seat now held by Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.).

The ads show pictures of fetuses that Bailey claims were taken from an abortion clinic trash bin, although at least one physician who has seen the ads has raised doubts about that assertion.

Bailey bought time for the ads last Friday on stations in Louisville, Ky., which serve southern Indiana, and on one station in Indianapolis.

The spots “are not really suitable for television,” said Paul Karpowicz, the president and general manager of WISH-TV in Indianapolis. “Regardless of which side of the issue you’re on, the method he has used to convey his message is so graphic and gut wrenching I think it distorts his message.”

WISH-TV and the other stations contacted the FCC to ask if they were bound to carry the ad, and “the response we got was yes you are,” said Karpowicz, because Bailey is running for federal office.

Milton Grossman, chief of the political programming division of the FCC in Washington said that “the law prohibits stations from censoring, refusing or editing material from legally qualified candidates.”

Questions such as this are rare. In 1983, Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt considered running for office and promised to run commercials that challenged federal decency laws. When several house members asked the FCC for a response, the staff attorneys drafted a memo saying stations need not be bound to broadcast them if they violated federal statutes on pornography.

WISH-TV is running a disclaimer on the ad saying: “Some viewers may find the following paid political announcement objectionable, particularly to children. WISH-TV is required by federal law to run this announcement.” By law, if the disclaimer runs for one candidate’s ads in this race it must run for all.

In one ad, Bailey says on camera the content of his commercial is not suitable for children but that abortion is not suitable for the United States. Then the screen shows pictures of dead fetuses for 15 seconds.

The second ad begins with a picture of live babies, then switches to the dead fetuses, while Bailey’s voice says: “If something is so horrifying we can’t stand to look at it, why are we tolerating it?”

Local Planned Parenthood officials, and at least one physician who saw the ad, have challenged the ad’s truthfulness, saying that the fetuses could not by their appearances have been aborted fetuses.

Bailey’s Republican primary opponent Charles D. Loos, a former state auditor and retired U.S. Marshall, said he is not concerned with Bailey’s ads.