Reacting to Super Bowl ads, the radical pro-abortion group NARAL put their extremism on public display.  Most of the ads were deemed sexist by this humorless group of control freaks, but they saved their special ire for the Doritos ad, which showed an about-to-be-born child reacting, in the womb, to his dad's bag of Doritos.  The ad was cute and funny, and it got the point across that everybody loves Doritos.

However, NARAL saw it differently.  In their tweet, they said:

@NARAL

#NotBuyingIt - that @Doritos ad using #antichoice tactic of humanizing fetuses & sexist tropes of dads as clueless & moms as uptight. #SB50

Look at their core criticism closely.  Doritos, they claimed, used an "anti-choice tactic" of humanizing fetuses.  They couldn't be any clearer.  The extremists at NARAL really do not believe that fetuses are human.  Worse, they actually do believe that unbelievable view so strongly that they see any attempt to "humanize" those humans as nothing more than an "anti-choice tactic" – and, it should be noted, as a threat to their advocacy of unlimited on-demand abortions, from the moment of conception to the baby's first breath.

I might be accused of quibbling if I pointed out that the "punch line" of the comic commercial was the fetus's birth, as he flung himself out of the womb to grab a dropped Doritos chip.  So by the end of that 30-second morality play, the subject of NARAL's displeasure was no longer a fetus, but a living, breathing, Doritos-eating human being – which pretty much says it all when it comes to "humanizing the fetus."  Even according to NARAL's logic, the commercial did "humanize the fetus," literally.

But that raises the larger question.  Millions of people – most but not all of them women – support NARAL.  Emotionally, intellectually, and financially, they stand with the extremists at NARAL who not only refuse to see a fetus as human, but actively object to anybody else viewing a fetus as human.  Unable to win by facts or logic, like other extremists, they turn to shunning, banning, and putting pressure on opponents to cave in to their righteous demands.

This echoes an incident in New Zealand a few years ago when a national soccer champion starred in a commercial, bottle-feeding his infant son.  The message was clear – dads should be involved with their kids.  However, a group of New Zealand "Lactivists" – passionately radical advocates of breastfeeding – cried foul, claiming that the commercial, which was not about breastfeeding, but about dads and their kids, somehow insulted those who believe in breastfeeding.  The story went international, and the activist group was roundly mocked.

Recently, extremists on the left have repeatedly tried to shut down debates and force others to bow to their will – all too often successfully.  Planned Parenthood took a big chunk out of Susan B. Komen for the Cure when that group tried to end funding the national chain of abortion mills.  Advocates of a "global warming" worldview continue to insist that "the debate has ended" – and many go further, demanding that those who see it otherwise lose professional credentials, jobs, and reputation.  Now NARAL want to punish those who see a full-term fetus as human.

The more this kind of thing happens, the more these extremists marginalize themselves, and for that we should be grateful.  Yet as long as millions of women blindly follow NARAL into the pit of stupidity, they will continue to try to dehumanize human children just waiting to be born – and their shrill voices will continue to shape and influence public policy. 

They should not be ignored, for they do have power.  Instead, they should be countered – by fact and by logic, as well as by mockery and by satire.

As Justice Brandeis famously wrote, when it comes to the outrageous statements of extremists and fanatics, "the remedy to be applied is more speech."

Barnett is a political consultant and P.R. professional, the CEO of Barnett Marketing Communications.  He's authored a dozen books on professional communications and taught at several universities but primarily supports his clients, who have included presidential candidates, other politicians, and conservative think-tanks, as well as high-tech and start-up businesses.  In 2008, he exposed in the pages of American Thinker the real Obama abortion position – that it should be used as birth control, even for his own daughters – explaining why NARAL supported him over life-long feminist activist Hillary Clinton.