A Super Bowl ad to rile abortion politics

Anti-abortion crusader and would-be Democratic candidate for president Randall Terry expects the Federal Communications Commission to decide as soon as Feb 3 if television stations must run his graphic ads — featuring aborted fetuses — during Sunday’s Super Bowl.

“I think we’re going to win,” said Terry. Terry, founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue in the 1980s, has been fighting to get NBC’s WMAQ station in Chicago to air the commercial during the game under rules that require broadcasters to give access to legitimate candidates. The TV station turned Terry down, after the Democratic Party disavowed him, but now Terry is asking federal regulators to intervene. Terry said that a half-dozen other stations across the country will run the ads as they are already “bought and paid for.” While the ads contain what many would consider objectionable images, Terry contends that TV stations are legally barred from denying a “bona fide” federal candidate reasonable access to the airwaves.