Super Bowl Ad Stirs Controversy

A Super Bowl ad from Focus on the Family featuring former Florida Gators football star Tim Tebow has created a scuffle between abortion rights groups.

The Heisman Trophy winning quarterback — one of the most celebrated college football players of all time — has cut an ad with his mother Pam, who tells of her decision not to end her 1987 pregnancy in spite of advice from doctors to do so. Pam Tebow and her husband were working as missionaries in the Philippines at the time when doctors there advised her to have an abortion due to health concerns. She did not, and Tim Tebow was born.

The ad will debut during the Super Bowl, prompting protests from numerous women’s groups and organizations supporting abortion that say the ad violates CBS’s longstanding tradition of not airing controversial ads during sports events.

“The abortion debate has no place in the Super Bowl. I organize abortion rights rallies all the time and I recognize how inappropriate it would be for me to sit in the stands with signs at the Super Bowl,” said Erin Matson, vice president of the National Organization for Women, which has called on CBS to reject the ad.

Jehmu Greene, president of the Women’s Media Center, sent a letter to CBS on Monday urging the network to not air the ad that she says “uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sporting event of the year.” Of course, she has not seen the ad, nor has she seen a script to the ad. No doubt, she would have harsh words if her group were running an ad that was being criticized by someone who had never seen the ad.

CBS has approved the script of the Super Bowl ad and defended its decision in a statement.

“Our standards and practices process continues to adhere to a policy that ensures all ads on all sides of an issue are appropriate for air,” the statement read. You can bet the ad is not in any way controversial. The left-leaning CBS is not likely to approve anything that remotely resembles a promotion of religious faith or something that would vaguely suggest that abortion be made illegal.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, defended CBS’s decision during an interview with POLITICO.

The head of the group opposing abortion rights said that “Women can be trusted with information and they certainly don’t need to be protected from the idea that if they have a crisis pregnancy that they can choose life.”

“What are they protecting people from?” she asked. “It is just so counter to the whole mission which is to provide women choices. This is just the one choice they can’t abide.”

Of course, what they are really protecting is the Abortion mill industry. The so-called Women's Rights groups (a misnomer if there ever was one) are only interested in one choice. The choice that funnels billions of dollars into abortion mills, murdering millions of innocent children in the process.