Tim Tebow’s mother contracted amoebic dysentery while she was pregnant with her son. Doctors advised an abortion. She refused. Tim was born, turned into a great son, and won a Heisman Trophy. She is very grateful that she made that choice, and that he survived.
When it became known Pam Tebow would star in a 2010 Super Bowl ad sponsored by the socially conservative Focus on the Family, abortion-defending liberals lost their minds.
Matt Yglesias at the Center for American Progress griped not only that Tebow would “alienate fans,” but also that his Mom had succumbed to invalid reasoning in not aborting Tim. Later, Yglesias called the ad “Tim Tebow’s forced pregnancy advocacy.”
Lots of women’s groups called on CBS to cancel the ad.
The ad featured Pam Tebow discussing how important family is and how lucky she is to have her son.
You would have thought the furor would disappear after the ad aired and everyone realized it wasn’t lobbying to outlaw abortion.
Nope. Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization of Women, still decried the ad’s “anti-abortion message,” although finding that offense to be lesser than it’s apparent justification of “violence against women.”
Set aside the humorlessness of that reaction. The fact that NOW’s president saw the ad as “anti-abortion” was telling—and true. Despite zero mentions of abortion, the ad was an anti-abortion message.
Celebrating Tebow’s birth and his life, instead of arguing that a more reasonable mother would have killed him, is condemning abortion. It’s saying that choosing life is better than choosing death.
This unnerves NOW and the abortion lobby. It ought to.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s commentary editor, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
