Tim Tebow and mom to star in pro-life Superbowl ad

Posted by Natalie Zutter , Jan, 2010 @ 12:27 pm

Tebow-Crying
No, I’m not making fun of Tebow crying — I know I would if I lost a championship — but the picture pretty aptly illustrates the elephant in the room here: Christianity.

Why do Focus the Family and CBS want to mess up my Superbowl with polarizing moral issues?

Confession: I don’t watch the Superbowl for the game, but for the new collection of ads. So I’d like to know who had the bright idea to make a stridently pro-life ad featuring Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother Pam, who decided to carry her fifth child to term rather than aborting him as her doctors suggested. Good for Pam that the fetus she decided to keep grew up to become a talented college football player, but sports is an inappropriate realm in which to drag your personal issues.

The biggest fallacy with their thinking is that by pushing a pro-life agenda — especially in a field of hyperworshipped men where the only mother figures are intensely controlling ones — they automatically exclude all possibility of choice. Pam Tebow probably shouldn’t have been trying to bring a fifth child into the world, yet no one stopped her from making the decision that fit with her beliefs. A pro-life ad, by comparison, is unlikely to embrace the opposition’s arguments.

Let me clarify that I could reconcile the existence of a pro-life ad during the Superbowl if there were also to be a Plan B, or Planned Parenthood, commercial. Otherwise, it’s incredibly biased.

Jezebel commenter madeofawesome presents a much-welcome, clear-minded take on the debate, without allowing her very personal experience to really cloud her judgment:

I was almost aborted, as was my youngest brother. Abortion is an issue that is incredibly personal to me. I am so glad that my mother chose to have us. For years I used this as my reasoning for being pro-life. Now that I’ve gotten older, I realize that things aren’t always black and white. I admire my mother for her choice to carry us to full term. It was her choice, and I don’t know that it would mean the same if she had been forced to carry us. I don’t think I could ever choose to have an abortion–mostly because I’m such a bleeding heart. It’s not my choice. I respect the right to have an abortion. I don’t believe in abortion; I believe in the choice.

Also, from SunburnedCounsel:

Seriously. My mum thought long and hard about aborting me, because my da was very, very ill when I was conceived and there was no good data on what that might do to the fetus. I have always known this, and I don’t find it particularly interesting (mostly just glad science has improved to make the decision more educated for women now). If she had aborted, then it would have been a good decision for her, and I wouldn’t have been around to give a shit. I haven’t exactly hung my whole life on this.

I would be happy to discuss pro-choice — which should be the name for any decision involving pregnancy — with women as pragmatic as these.

Do you care that sports and politics will merge in this pro-life ad with no pro-choice rejoinder? Or will you simply get up from your armchair during the commercials to refill beer and chips? Also, I’d love to see male Ology readers/sports fans weigh in on the debate.

[Via Jezebel]

[Image source: Outdoor Sports Addict]

Tags: abortion, pro-choice, pro-life, religion, Sports, Superbowl, Superbowl ads

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15 Comments

JoeG says – reply to this

If pro-life feels they want to carry this ad, with someone who is a HUGE figure in man football fans eyes, and who has been a great role model for children and grown-ups alike….And they have the funding to pull it off, I see no issue in this. Why don’t the pro-choice folks counter and make an ad of their own? I see no wrong in this at all… it kind of proves the pro-choice point, that any “embryo” has the potential to be president, or in this case the most decorated college football player of all time.

Natalie Zutter says – reply to this

– and yet, they probably wouldn’t go to all the trouble of making a -Superbowl- ad if that “embryo” had grown up to be a bum, or an artist, or were still living on his mom’s couch instead of playing pro football.

JoeG says – reply to this

It’s not their job to tell you that. It’s their job to tell you what you need to know. Abort Tim Tebow.. no Tim Tebow. pretty basic.

Jeff Z says – reply to this

At the same time, we have to consider the mom’s health. Tebow’s mother is lucky to have survived that pregnancy healthy. The reason I am against pro-life is because if a woman is uncomfortable or especially in danger by carrying a child, she should not be forced by law to not abort the child. Of course any given child (“fetus”) can grow up to be a spectacular person – but so could the next child that the same mother will give birth to, if she is not ready to carry a baby at that time.

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