How to use your copywriting skills for good.
I watched a clip yesterday that was doing the rounds on social media. A UK MP called Danny Kruger asked why the government was denouncing the SCOTUS decision, when actually he thinks we should be debating abortion rights here in the UK. He didn’t believe that women had complete bodily autonomy in this situation, as “another body is involved”.
Cue massive shouts of WTF? Here too? etc.
But, you see, I’m not surprised.
I grew up in a conservative Christian environment. I sat and listened to perfectly lovely help-your-Granny-across-the-road-and-then-pay-for-her-shopping people explain how it was important to sign this petition to scale back abortion access because “life begins at conception”, “we’re all God’s children”, “before we were formed in our mothers’ wombs God knew us and made plans for us”.
And this was 30 years ago.
The UK is not safe.
And the reason that we have politicians standing in our places of power calling for a rollback of women’s rights?
The temptation is to say that it’s because of the growing Religious Right in this country, who are trying to push their values onto others.
But I don’t think it is.
They’re the foot soldiers. The cannon fodder. The leaflet posters and petition forwarders.
But if you put them in front of a woman with 4 kids whose husband had just been laid off and who had just found out she was pregnant again…
Their first instinct would be to help. And I know, because I lived and worked with them for 30 years.
The thing that always confused me is how genuinely caring, compassionate, faithful people could (often unquestioningly) be drafted in to support this anti-choice argument. One which results in pain and suffering (and sometimes death) for women all over the world.
You want to know how? The rich, white, religious (and not so religious) elite. The same group of people who pushed Brexit by telling the working poor they were being harmed by unskilled migration, when really they just wanted to make more money themselves through deregulation and avoid new EU tax laws.
It’s these people who want to keep women poor, struggling, uneducated, spoonfed from tabloids, fighting against each other. They want to keep women at home with their 15 kids, not out in the workforce, and definitely not in positions of power making changes to the status quo.
They are making a power grab. And they’ve done it by convincing ordinary Christian people (who you might not agree with, but who generally are decent people) to carry the flag for them. While they sit in their oak-panelled rooms drinking whisky and laughing at how gullible humans are. And organising abortions for their mistresses.
So, what to do?
If you’re a marketer, a copywriter, anyone who uses persuasive language for their work, then you have a skill to lay at the feet of those fighting back.
If you want to take it to the top then great! There are so many organisations looking for copywriters to help them with fundraising, advertising, and campaigning. Offer your services!
But if you’re more of a 1-1 person, then please – use your communication skills to talk to those ordinary people. You know, the slightly removed family members you follow on Facebook who post dubious articles about full-term abortions.
You know how to change people’s minds. It’s what your clients pay you for. So try and change theirs. Not by ranting and telling them they don’t care about human suffering. They do. They’re just being manipulated. Do your research, craft your message, help them to see another perspective.
Copywriters of the world – UNITE!