Focus on the Family: Misusing Football Star's Life to Attack Women's Rights?

by Alex DiBranco · 2010-01-15 20:46:00 UTC
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Earlier today, Mike Jones posted on the Gay Rights blog about anti-gay, anti-choice Focus on the Family getting college football rockstar Tim Tebow for a Superbowl commercial. But, as anti-queer rights as Focus on the Family most definitely is, what I'm focused on is the fact that this particular ad will most likely attack women's reproductive rights. Doesn't that ever get old?

Tebow will appear on the commercial with his mom to "share one of their many personal family-affirming stories." The Denver Post reports that one potential story could be about his mother's decision not to have an abortion despite a life-threatening pregnancy in the Philippines -- where abortion is illegal, and even women whose lives are endangered may not be able to obtain an abortion because they require the approval of a panel of medical deciders.

So, the moral is: don't have an abortion -- that fetus could be the next football star!

I guess it wouldn't make such a great story if she had been one of the over half a million women who die from complications related to pregnancy every year. Maybe we should get one of those women to appear in an expensive Superbowl commercial.

Oh wait.

It is great that, in the Tebows' case, Tim's mother survived and was able to raise a family. (That Tim became a football star doesn't much matter to me, since I find the sport tedious -- if the clock says 60 seconds left, there shouldn't be 10 minutes to go). But they were lucky, and not everybody is that lucky. This luck, this personal story with such meaning to their own family, should not be misused for a Focus on the Family agenda to take away women's right to access a safe abortion. I sincerely hope that even an organization like Focus on the Family has the tact to realize this, or that the Tebows' refused to allow their story to be cheapened in this way, and it is not the commercial that appears on February 7th.

It is grievously offensive to those women who have had an abortion to protect their lives, perhaps so they remain with the family they already had, or so they could have a safe pregnancy in the future. And it is far more offensive to the women who were killed by a life-threatening pregnancy because they were unable to obtain an abortion, or who were forced into a risky illegal procedure that led to their death.

Photo credit: OPEN Sports

Alex DiBranco is a Change.org Editor who has worked for the Nation, Political Research Associates, and the Center for American Progress. She is now based in New York City.
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