Former Florida Gators quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow has finished taping a new $3 million anti-choice television ad, which is set to air during this year's Super Bowl broadcast. The ad was created for the group Focus on the Family, whose founder James Dobson is infamous for claiming, among other gems, that comprehensive sex education "strips kids...of their modesty" (my emphasis).
Sara Libby at True/Slant has this to say about the Tebow commercial:
"So, there you have it, ladies. It doesn’t matter what your personal circumstances or beliefs compel. You should choose life no matter what because you never know whether your unborn child could turn into a Heisman trophy-winning football player. And I thought those Sobe ads with the computer-generated dancing lizards were bad."Now it would be too easy to dismiss this ad as a case of some football player preaching to an anti-choice choir. Given Tebow's immense popularity and the sheer size of a captive, glued-to-all-of-the-new-commercials Super Bowl viewership (in 2009, over 98 million Americans tuned in to Super Bowl XLIII), we should feel some cause for concern. Ignorance can be influential, especially when its vehicle is a friendly athlete with an apparently soft-spoken demeanor.
How should the defenders of reproductive rights respond? Fighting fire with fire (format-wise) is one option, but understood in the narrowest sense this would mean enlisting another figure from popular culture to argue against Tebow's claims. I think that it would be better to combat gloss and celebrity with the plain and stark truth: What if rights defenders created an ad featuring ordinary people talking about the danger of returning to a world of back-alley abortions? Our movement might not be able to distribute such a message on air during the Super Bowl, but perhaps that's o.k. The point is that we need to craft a forthright and passionate answer to this attack on choice. Your thoughts and ideas?
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His parents were missionaries in the Phillippines when his mother, while pregnant, became extremely ill and suffered something called "placental abruption." Doctors recommended she have an abortion to protect her life, thinking that Tim would be stillborn. She refused, gave birth to him, and he has gone on to positively contribute to society and be a role model.
Don't attack him for being grateful to his mother for the gift she gave him.
Nikki-I agree with what you say here. "fighting fire with fire" is not the best way to go, and the truth about back alley abortions and how the freedom to choose a safe, affordable abortion effects everyday people is more effective. Great post!
I definitely WON'T enjoy watching this commercial. Yes, it is great that Tebow is grateful his mother risked her life to give birth to him (just as all mothers who carry to term do), but for him to use that to imply that all women should do the same is really angering. The anti-choice community LOVES to use those rare stories of mothers facing death miraculously giving birth to healthy babies because they don’t get abortions. They use these poster babies as a way to promote the message that you should ALWAYS "choose life" (or always choose the baby over the mother), even when with most of these cases, when a doctor tells the mother she will die if she has the baby, the doctors turn out to be right--both mother and baby die! The hypocrisy of "pro-life"...
Stop making women feel guilty about not wanting to die along with their babies and wanting them to wait for miracles that aren’t going to happen.
And a good sports player with good morals will always be a better role model than any extremist activist for any cause.
People with good morals do make good role models. I'm glad we can agree there. However, I would define an extremist as one who always advocates "choosing 'life'" when it is almost certain both mother and baby will die. If you want to define extremism as one that varies greatly from the general population, then this would be it. MOST people don't think abortion is ok all of the time. They also don't think it's wrong all the time. They believe it is ok in extreme cases such as rape, incest, or when the mother's life is in danger.
Wow. Judge much? LOL - of course, all sports figures and uber-fans are conservatives! Why didn't I see that before!? How could any liberal idiot ever understand the complexities of football or baseball? We won't even count basketball, because you know the negroes have taken over that sport, and we all know Steele is an exception to the blacks-as-liberals rule.
Being a life-long college football fan (inherited it from my MOM - who taught me more about the sport than most men know), that must mean <GASP> I'm a conservative! Better run to my therapist - wait, I can't do that because therapists are only for liberal sissies - OK, run to my pastor - wait, can't do that - note to self: "find pastor to mentor me in the ways of conservatives."
And in case you didn't catch it, above is an example of extreme sarcasm, so no flames from liberals Chrisitians, or minorities, please! Conservatives, flame away.
And, dear CortezC, what does hiring the right real estate agent have to do with abortion? If there was an analogy or parallel or metaphor that was being drawn there, I missed it.
:/