The ad, sponsored by the Pro-Choice Public Education Project, is part of a $250,000 advertising campaign in seven regions across the country, including Lansing.
Marilyn Hysen, Lansing project leader, said the project cannot hope to match spending by anti-abortion groups but will try to counter their emotional pitch with facts about abortion.
"All you've seen is the images that they've put out, which have been horrendous," she said, referring to ads condemning late-term abortions.
One of the pro-choice group's 30-second television ads features a California woman, Claudia Ades, and her husband, Richard. Mrs. Ades underwent a late-term abortion of the type Congress recently sought to restrict. She said her fetus had a fatal chromosomal disorder called trisomy-13.
"My health and my ability to have another child were in danger,"she says in the ad.
Mrs. Ades also says millions of people worry about having healthy babies and the dangers of problem pregnancies. She urges viewers, "Don't let them take away your doctor's ability to give you the care you need."
The second ad features a young woman and a young man jogging and discussing Congress' efforts to limit abortion and cut funding for family planning.
"Do you ever wonder what they have against women?"the man asks.
"I wonder if they know what year it is" the woman says in the 30-second ad.
The ads are being shown in Illinois, Colorado, Oregon, North Carolina, California and Washington as well as Michigan. Hysen said Lansing was chosen because of the Michigan Legislature's record of passing legislation aimed at discouraging abortion.
Right to Life of Michigan President Barbara Listing said the ads may actually be aimed at the tight 8th Congressional race in mid-Michigan between Republican incumbent Dick Chrysler and Democrat Debbie Stabenow.
But Right to Life of Michigan also has gotten into politics with its own ads. Last month, the group began running two television ads statewide urging viewers to call Congress to override President Clinton's veto of a ban on late-term abortions.
One of the ads criticized Democratic U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, who's up for re-election, for supporting Clinton's veto.
Right to Life expected to spend about $230,000 by the end of October producing and airing the ads, which some Detroit-area stations declined to carry, Listing said.
She added that the abortion rights ad featuring the Ades couple does not mention the woman's five later miscarriages, which Listing said could be linked to the abortion.
"The sadness is the fact that the method (the doctor) and a few other abortionists are using will probably cause infertility in women rather than preventing it,"she said.
If Mrs. Ades had carried the fetus to term, "her baby would have died outside the womb instead of unfortunately having his brains sucked out. It's a tragedy, probably more of a tragedy that she is being used in the commercials," Listing said.
Hysen said the campaign, which also features newspaper ads, is part of a two-year educational effort.
It is supported by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Feminist Majority Foundation, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, the National Abortion Rights Action League Foundation, Ms. Foundation for Women, ProChoice Resource Center and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation.