The Walls Are Talking Analysis

The Walls Are Talking. It’s an intriguing title and an even more intriguing story. The book, written by former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson, claims to give readers a glimpse of what truly goes on inside the walls of abortion clinics. As a result, the ad for The Walls Are Talking strongly appeals to ethos and pathos, which makes it incredibly powerful and compelling. I know, because I am the target audience.
Abby Johnson ran the ad for The Walls Are Talking in National Review, which is a magazine that is fairly conservative—the mission statement of the magazine itself references it as “a conservative weekly journal” (“The Mission Statement”). The upcoming issue of the magazine sports a cover with a cartoon drawing of Hillary Clinton
and the bold words, “The Liberal Threat to Democracy” (Genn). The issue in which The Walls Are Talking ad ran contains an article written by a friend of former Presidential candidate Ted Cruz; the ad itself was placed next to an article with the title “Happy Warrior: The Trump Trainwreck.” The most obvious appeal in The Walls Are Talking ad is the appeal to ethos.
First and foremost, the ad addresses the author’s credibility in a short biography down below the synopsis of the book. Abby Johnson, whose name is in a bright red font to draw the audience’s eyes to it, is a prolife advocate, but she is quite familiar with abortion clinics and what goes on in them because she used to run one (The Walls Are Talking). Though the stories in the book are not hers, she would certainly have a good idea of whether or not they were true because of her time and experience at Planned Parenthood. The actual chapters of the book, however, were written by abortion clinic workers who, like Abby Johnson, left their clinics. The cover of the book pictured in the ad at first glance looks strange and completely irrelevant to the topic of the book—after all, what does a fly have to do with abortion? However, there is an underlying message in the cover that helps establish the book’s ethos. Through this book, the audience can be “flies on the wall”—they can get a firsthand “look” at what truly goes on inside abortion clinics. The background of the ad furthers that message, as it is designed to look like the inside of a cold, bare exam room. Finally, this ad appeals to ethos and establishes its credibility through four other pro-life advocates’ comments, including David Bereit and Ramona Treviño. David Bereit is another well-known pro-life advocate who is the current CEO of 40 Days for
Life and the former director of Stop Planned Parenthood (“Headquarters Team”); he calls The Walls are Talking an “important book” for the pro-life movement (The Walls Are Talking). As someone who has worked as a pro-life advocate for a considerable amount of time, Bereit knows what information helps the pro-life cause and motivates those with pro-life beliefs to act. Ramona Treviño’s story is eerily similar to Abby Johnson’s; she, like Johnson, worked for Planned Parenthood and left a few months after Lila Rose’s undercover Planned Parenthood videos exposed the company not only failing to report suspected sex traffickers but helping them (Jalsevac). Her experience certainly lends this book and even the pro-life movement itself more credibility; after all, she, too, saw what went on in abortion clinics and became pro-life because of the things she witnessed. She, like Abby Johnson, would know whether or not the stories in The Walls Are Talking are credible. The appeal to ethos is certainly the most obvious appeal this ad makes, but the more subtle appeal to pathos is equally as strong, if not stronger. The audience is told that these former clinic workers “share their stories to shed light on the reality of abortion.” The term shed light is often used when talking about something evil and hidden. Abortion is described in the ad’s synopsis of the book as “an act of violence,” which is a line that will resonate with the conservative audience and provoke sadness and anger. The ad expands on that point, claiming that more lives—such as the lives of “the mother, father, doctor, and everyone else involved”—than just the unborn baby’s are affected and harmed. That statement will affect the reader tremendously by creating in them a desire to see an end to abortion, which the ad portrays as a horrific evil. There is anger in that desire, yes, but also sadness. Sadness for the baby who will never take its first breath or celebrate its first birthday, for the mother who chose to kill her child, for the father who may or may not know that his baby even existed, let alone that he or she was mercilessly slaughtered. Sadness for the doctor, who now has the unborn baby’s blood on his hands, who has been so blinded to think that this act is morally okay. Sadness for a country where abortion is considered a right and where our President declares “God bless Planned Parenthood” (Kumar). But then the appeal to pathos of the ad takes a sharp turn. The sadness and anger the ad has evoked in the audience begins to change into hope. The last two sentences of the ad’s synopsis of the book speak of grace and fresh starts. There is hope in the former clinic workers’ stories for anyone and everyone affected by abortion—the mothers, the fathers, even the doctors. Even those who have participated in such horrific evil as abortion are not beyond redemption and healing. In contrast with the appeals to ethos and pathos, however, the appeal to logos is almost nonexistent in this ad. The only evident appeal to logic in the ad is the statement that unborn babies are the victims of abortion. It’s a rather weak appeal to logic, because it relies on the assumption that readers believe the unborn are people and not just blobs of cells with the potential for life. While most National Review readers will read this ad with that mindset, any liberal readers will likely disagree and even dismiss the ad as not credible because they do not hold that same assumption. Kairos plays a significant role in this ad as well. The United States has an election coming up, and abortion continues to be a significant issue. This ad reminds its conservative readers how important this election is when it comes to abortion. As a result, even the most anti-Trump Republicans could be swayed to vote for him solely because of his claim to be pro-life. Trump has promised that, should he become President, he will nominate pro-life justices to the Supreme Court, which could see several spots open up in the next President’s time in office. Like it or not, Hillary Clinton would certainly not set forth pro-life policies, while with Trump there is at least a chance, however slim it may seem to anti-Trump conservatives (Patton). The Walls Are Talking ad uses all three appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos to draw in readers.
It is weakest in its appeal to logos, but incredibly strong in its appeal to ethos and even stronger in its appeal to pathos. As a result, this ad a very powerful one, because it reminds readers of the unjust, evil nature of abortion and, along with the credibility of the book's authors and supporters, compels them to read the book. It resonates strongly with conservative readers, because as Senator Ted Cruz said, “no right is more precious and fundamental than the right to life, and any just society should protect that right at every
stage.”