The $2.5 million 30-second pro-life advertisement to be aired by CBS during this Sunday's Super Bowl, featuring Pam Tebow explaining why she rejected advice to have an abortion and carried her future Heisman Trophy winner son Tim to term, has generated far more publicity than its sponsors, Dr. James Dobson's "Focus on the Family," could have hoped for.
The viciousness of the attacks by pro-abortion groups such as the National Organization for Women (NOW) and left-wing commentators has been astounding. Many of these radical groups have been lobbying CBS to pull the advertisement. For example, according to today's "The Washington Times," the Women's Media Center in a letter to CBS wrote: "The content of this ad endangers women's health, uses sports to divide rather than to unite, and promotes an organization that opposes the equality of Americans based on gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and reproductive freedom."
Without any doubt, part of the venomous attack against Tim Tebow -- who besides winning the Heisman Trophy as a sophomore, helped lead his Florida team to two national championships -- is due to the fact that Tebow is a commited and courageous Christian who painted Bible verses on his face before every game and when his team won the national championship he said that "I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" as his hero, Kurt Warner said after his Super Bowl championship. Public confessions of faith such as these drive many left-wingers absolutely up the wall.
However, conservatives have now been surprised at the liberal backlash to these anti-free speech pro-abortion groups. Even the hopelessly left-wing "New York Times" wrote in an editorial that the campaign to have CBS reject the Pam and Tim Tebow advertisement is "puzzling and dismaying" and called the pro-abortion groups "would-be censors." This is from a newspaper which is radically pro-abortion.
"The Washington Times" also reported that "Frances Kissling, founder and former president of Catholics for a Free Choice, and Kate Michelman, the former longtime head of the National Abortion Rights Action League, wrote a guest column in 'The Washington Post' last Sunday saying their side of the abortion debate should counter the pro-life argument in its own Super Bowl strategy and not attack the Tebows." Interestingly enough, some 68% of "The Washington Times" readers in a poll yesterday said that CBS should air a pro-abortion advertisement during the Super Bowl if one is offered to them.
A sports columnist in "The Washington Post," Sally Jenkins, said in Tuesday's newspaper that the attacks by feminist and pro-abortion groups, such as NOW, against CBS airing the Tebow advertisement which tells that a woman made a choice to keep her baby rather than abort her baby shows that such groups "aren't actually 'pro-choice' so much as they are pro-abortion."
Mrs. Jenkins wrote: "I'm pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I've heard in the past week, I'll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the 'National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time.'" Prominent liberals such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have said they want to make abortions rare in this country. If they believe this, they should encourage people like Pam and Tim Tebow to continue to exercise their First Amendment rights.