Friday, March 5, 2010

Where is the Choice in "Prochoice"

I still don’t understand what was so controversial about the advertisement Focus on the Family purchased for the Super Bowl with Tim Tebow and his mother. I also don’t understand the over the top reaction from liberal and feminist groups. Twenty-two some odd years ago, when Pam Tebow was pregnant, doctors advised her to have an abortion because of a tropical disease that she had contacted while she and her husband served as missionaries in the Philippines.

If those who are pro-choice are truly about choice then what would the fact that Pam Tebow exercised her choice to, as they say, “do whatever she wanted with her own body”, cause them such angst? An article in People Magazine’s January 26, 2010 issue says, “Pro-choice groups are calling for Super Bowl broadcaster CBS to reject the spot, but the network is standing firm, according to CBS News”. Wouldn’t you think that someone who was pro-choice on abortion would be supportive of any choice when it comes to an abortion? It kind of makes one thing that maybe; just maybe, they are only pro-choice when the choice is a choice that they would support.

An article in the NY Daily News on January 26 says:

Several women’s groups have argued that the spot, which is believed to be a pro-life ad featuring Tebow and his mother, is an advocacy ad and is inappropriate for Super Sunday.

“An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year - an event designed to bring Americans together,” said Jehmu Greene, president of the New York-based Women’s Media Center.
Also joining Women’s Media Center in the protest are the National Organization for Women and the Feminist Majority.

Let’s see, while watching the Super Bowl with my family I have to endure ad after ad about drunken nincompoops, and erectile dysfunction but it is inappropriate to play a nice wholesome ad showing a healthy and loving relationship between a mother and a son because it “is believed to be a pro-life ad”. So, pro-life is bad and inappropriate but pro-drunken behavior is okay.

One liberal blog said that the only reason that CBS accepted the ad was for money. I personally was very shocked to hear that a commercial television network would actually make a decisions to air an advertisement only because someone was willing to pay them a great deal of money to do so. Wow, what a revelation.

Then there is this message from some pinhead on a blog called Deadspin that claims that the message in the ad is dangerous. Dangerous to who I would like to know? This writer says, “This is dangerous stuff. They're telling women, even the ones at risk, to gamble with their health. What's pro-life about that?” Huh, I guess it depends upon what is viewed as life and what is viewed as choice. Pam Tebow made a choice that preserved two lives and the writer says that her choice was dangerous and I assume that to mean that if she had made the other choice, which would have would have ended one life while preserving one, was the less dangerous choice. I don’t think I get that. Let me see:

Choice A = Have an abortion = live mother and dead child
Choice B = Do not have an abortion = live mother and child

It would seem to me that a pretty strong case could be made that the choice that Pam Tebow chose not to make was in fact the most dangerous option. The fact is that when she had to make the choice she made it without knowing what the outcome would be. It seems to me that this would very much please someone who is prochoice because Pam Tebow made a choice. Granted, her choice may have put her life at more risk than it would have been if she had made another choice but, having abortion is not necessarily a danger free choice. There are some pretty severe side effects of abortion, including infection, sterility, and even death.

So why all of the fuss? Why all of the controversy? As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Could it be that those who are most loudly protesting are not in fact, prochoice? If the only acceptable choice for Pam Tebow was to have an abortion, where is the choice in that?