Let me tell you a story. When I was in second or third grade, I stayed up past my bedtime and sneaked into the family room at my house to watch a rerun of “Married with Children,” which I wasn’t allowed to see.

During the commercials of the show, a warning ran saying something like, “Due to graphic content, the following should only be seen by mature viewers.”

Since I considered myself a “big girl,” I decided to ignore the warning and watch the commercial.

It was an anti-abortion ad featuring saran-wrap-covered, mutilated fetuses that looked like pieces of steak. It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen and made me sick to my 8-year-old stomach.

I turned the Television off and didn’t watch the rest of “Married with Children”; in fact, I didn’t watch the show again until my parents decided I was old enough.

The commercial gave me nightmares for months, and to this day I still shudder every time I think about it. It’s one of my most traumatic childhood memories, right up there with the time I got lost in Wal-mart and thought I’d have to spend the rest of my life in the alley behind the store, foraging for food in dumpsters.

Well, though I’m fairly moderate on most issues, I grew up to be an extremely passionate abortion-rights supporter.

Here’s a few more situations, from Psych 101:

– Participants in an experiment were shown an empty cup with the label “Not rat poison.” The experiment facilitator then poured sugar from a clearly labeled bag of sugar into the cup and asked the subjects to put the sugar in their lemonades. Most of the participants refused to drink from lemonade with “Not rat poison” sugar.

– In another experiment, subjects were shown to have a negative connotation of “Harry Smith” after reading headlines that said things like, “Police say Harry Smith had no involvement in crime.”

I don’t know if the disgusting commercial I watched during my illicit viewing of “Married with Children” had any influence on my current abortion stance, but I do know it didn’t make me pro-life, nor any less likely to get an abortion should I ever need one.

Psychologically, messages can often have the exact opposite effect from what was intended. I doubt any pro-choice or undecided ISU students were turned pro-life by the demonstrations yesterday, but I bet plenty of them gained a negative association toward the anti-abortion rights movement.

The demonstrators who dropped by Ames on Wednesday used tactics similar to those in the commercial I watched as a child.

The protesters, who called themselves “Missionaries to the Preborn,” apparently came from Wisconsin on a surprise four-day tour of Iowa colleges. They brought pamphlets and signs with highly detailed photographs of chopped-up fetuses and had harsh things to say about their opponents.

In fact, the whole rally was less an issue forum than a character attack. The text in the group’s leaflets was directly against Planned Parenthood and didn’t have much to say on abortion in general.

When abortion-rights supporters approached the pro-life group to debate the issue, the Missionaries of the Preborn resorted to name calling, giving the counter protesters the somewhat contradictory labels of “lesbians” and “whores.”

Though I completely disagree with them on this issue, I know that many people in the pro-life movement honestly believe in both the sanctity of life and the importance of being tolerant of those whose opinions differ from their own – in other words, the opposite of the Missionaries.

I don’t know if Missionaries to the Preborn in an any way involved with the murders of doctors who perform abortions or the bombing of abortion clinics, which I’ve always thought was an interesting definition of “pro-life” from those in the fringe movement.

However, the organization admitted to being affiliated with a group that broke into an abortion clinic to get the photographs of fetuses they so proudly displayed on their leaflets and posters, and their Web site, www.missionariestopreborn.com, reports that a leader is in jail for violating a restraining order against a “pro-abort,” as they call the opposition.

As for the Missionaries to the Preborn’s “evidence” as to the “evil” of Planned Parenthood, their credibility is shot from the complete lack of respect they showed toward the counter protesters.

Newsweek in February reported that the laid-back “It’s OK to pass” commercials from Partnership for a Drug Free America make more of an impact on teens than the anti-drug propaganda that they get from their teachers. And everyone knows you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.

Not to mention that had the Missionaries to the Preborn not decided to swing by Ames on Wednesday, we wouldn’t have had a pro-choice rally on Thursday.

Logic and reason beat out shock value and screams of “baby killers!” every time.

So thank you, Missionaries to the Preborn. You’ve helped my side of the abortion issue more than you know.

Jocelyn Marcus is a junior in English from Ames. She is opinion editor of the Daily.