Massive Media Company Pulls Ads for Famous Women's Health Center

The South Wind Women’s Center, known best as the women’s health clinic formerly run by Dr. George Tiller that reopened years after he was killed by an anti-abortion activist, has run into trouble yet again. Clear Channel, the media company responsible for bringing thousands of radio channels to listeners across the country, pulled the Center’s ads in Wichita, Kansas, because of “decency standards.”

The South Wind Women’s Center produced two different ads to air on the radio, which read as follows:

At South Wind Women’s Center, our physicians are committed to providing quality reproductive healthcare in Wichita. Each physician is board-certified in family medicine or obstetrics in gynecology. Between them, they have over 50 years of experience and dedication, ensuring women are able to ensure the care they need when they need it.

And:

South Wind Women’s Center was founded to reestablish full access to reproductive healthcare. The center provides high-quality medical care and trusts women to make the best decisions for themselves and their families. South Wind Women’s Center: entrusting women with their own medical decision-making.

There’s not much of anything here that can be referred to as “indecent” according to the dictionary definition. Besides some general references to “full access to reproductive healthcare” and “entrusting women with their own medical decision-making”, there’s no mention of abortion or vaginas or fetuses or anything that happens in real life that might be unsavory.

Clear Channel stations are known for hosting a predominantly conservative roster of news talk programming: you’ll often hear The Glenn Beck Radio Program, The Rush Limbaugh Show and The Sean Hannity Show. This decision to censor the South Women’s Center Ads is quite fitting with their previous choices, actually. They previously adopted a “zero-tolerance” approach to indecent content and began to phase out Howard Stern; they rejected ads for a Pride event in Florida; way back in the day when The Dixie Chicks spoke out against then President George W. Bush, Clear Channel pulled their music from channels, and more recently, the company supported Rush Limbaugh after he called Sandra Fluke a slut on air. Clear Channel’s dominance in the world of radio seemingly knows no bounds; just today, they announced they’d partnered with ABC to share ABC TV content on their airwaves.

The South Wind Women’s Center and Women, Action & the Media is asking that people send a message to Clear Channel that they’ll “#changethechannel unless they start running South Wind’s ads.” Not to be a downer, but given Clear Channel’s record, that seems unlikely.