Viewpoints
Focus on the family
CBS will air an ad during the Super Bowl in which college football star Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam Tebow, discuss her decision not to have an abortion despite doctors’ advice to do so. The news is creating precisely the stir that its sponsor, the Christian conservative group Focus on the Family, was almost certainly hoping for. Women’s groups have called on CBS not to air the ad, arguing that the Super Bowl is no place for one of the most divisive issues in politics. CBS reportedly has approved the script and plans to run the ad.
The irony is that the Tebow story has absolutely nothing to do with the question a woman with an unwanted pregnancy faces. Pam Tebow wanted to have her fifth child, but had become ill during a trip to the Philippines. It was on that basis that doctors recommended an abortion. She ignored them, mother and baby came through just fine, and he went on to win the Heisman trophy. God bless.
What does that have to do with the situation facing a teenage girl pregnant with a child she cannot raise, or a mother who is told that her much-wanted child has a chromosomal condition that is inconsistent with life? What does it have to do with a rape or incest victim and her right not to carry the child of her abuser?
I know plenty of stories like the Tebows’. Some of them end happily. Some do not. Few things are as awful as being told that the child you are carrying may not, or will not, live. Sometimes doctors are wrong, and sometimes they aren’t. Are the Tebows really telling American women to ignore their doctors’ advice, even when that advice is based on the best medical information? Are they telling women that they should risk their lives rather than have an abortion? Even the dissenters to Roe v. Wade would not go so far.
The news that teenage pregnancies are up for the first time in years is what we should all be concerned about, working on, thinking about. No one is for abortion, at least not anyone who should be taken seriously. I have never met a woman who had an abortion who viewed it as anything other than a painful, difficult and often heartbreaking decision, particularly when the abortion is the result of medical advice that the woman cannot sustain the pregnancy or the baby will not survive.
Thankfully, in the decades since Pam Tebow’s pregnancy, diagnostic techniques have improved, allowing doctors to give better advice. Hopefully today, her doctors would have been able to reassure her that both she and the baby would be fine, and abortion would not even have been an issue.
Given that, the only connection between the Tebow story and the real abortion debate is its ability to make women who have made the painful choice of abortion feel bad. This is emotional manipulation, pure and simple.
The not so subtle implication is that the fetus you aborted would have grown up to be some kind of superstar. How ridiculous. And frankly, how insulting. Without an athletic gene in my body, I can certainly say that I never expected any child of mine to win a Heisman. Like most mothers, I prayed only that they would be healthy. The suggestion that abortion is in any way connected to the value or the potential talents of the baby-to-be is so offensive that it is hard to believe Focus on the Family doesn’t see the distorted underside of their own advertisement.
So be it. I might go to the bathroom during that ad or make popcorn. Focus on the Family is getting attention and will get more. But it is doing so by running an ad that is deceptive and ultimately cruel.
To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
© 2010 CREATORS.COM
- Viewpoints
-
-
Budget debate about more than the budget
A few days before the 2010 General Assembly convened, Sen. Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, told a health care group the final version of a new state budget wouldn’t emerge until the last days of the session – just as it always does.
-
Bank merger benefits shareholders, not account holders
I have had my personal checking account at the same bank since I was in school. How I chose my bank was simple. My brother-in-law at the time was a branch manager and I opened an account with him. He left my bank and my family years ago, but I have stayed with my bank all these years for a simple reason: It was easy. Now my bank isn’t my bank anymore and it’s time for me to go, too.
-
Better than the can
If you are ever cut off from supermarkets and electricity due to a natural disaster (or because like some of us idiots you choose to go camping), you will be especially interested in this news.
-
Commissioners at fault for 2010 fiscal year deficit
If the Richmond City Commission would just take a look in a mirror, they will see who is responsible for a deficit of $1.8 million coming at the end of the 2010 fiscal year. They can’t make excuses or point fingers as they have up to now because this one rests solely on their shoulders. This large deficit simply is a result of their lack of action on expense-saving initiatives submitted last fall at the height of the financial crisis.
-
My Day at the Race Track Casino
I spent much of my childhood at race tracks. Usually not nice race tracks.
-
In like a lion, out like a lamb
The old saying goes that if March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb or vice versa.
-
Americans can speak for themselves on health care
Have you voted on any of the Democratic health care reform plans? Me neither.
-
Things about money you don’t learn in college
College seniors are entering a world of money — and without very much preparation for what is about to hit them.
-
Hope’s Wings is a matter of life and death
Hope’s Wings suspended its residential housing service Friday after just one year of operation because of inadequate funding. During the past year, the center has provided shelter and safety to more than 200 women as they fight to be free from domestic violence. Robyn Moreland, executive director of Hope’s Wings, shared two stories with me that further illustrate the need and importance of funding the center because it is a matter of life and death.
-
Police disciplinary process
During the past few months, I’ve come to learn that many in the community do not understand the police disciplinary process and the requirements imposed on police departments and city governments by state law that directs the process.
- More Viewpoints Headlines
-
