Everybody knows someone who considered having an abortion. It may be a friend, cousin, sister, aunt, or your own mother … and you may not even know about it.
Even if you didn’t watch the Super Bowl last Sunday, you probably heard about the pro-life ad funded by Focus on the Family that featured Pam Tebow talking about the birth of her son, Florida Gators quarterback Tim. In the weeks leading up to the grame, pro-choice groups such the National Organization for Women protested its airing, calling it divisive and the subject inappropriate for a sports event.
But CBS stuck by its decision, and after the ad aired, many wondered why the ad generated so much controversy. The ad never mentions abortion, and Tebow’s choice of life for her son is implicit. The ad offers viewers the chance to hear more of the Tebow story by visiting Focus on the Family’s website, and according to the organization, that’s exactly what viewers did. A Focus on the Family spokesman told the Catholic News Agency that by Monday, 760,000 had watched the full-length version of the Tebow story at the website.
USA Today reports that the ad achieved its goal by generating “a torrent of new attention” for Focus on the Family, ranking the ad’s success on its consumer notice, viewership, and social media impact.
So now pro-life voices are beginning to wonder: Other than creating name recognition for Focus on the Family, what was the point of the ad?
According to Focus on the Family President Jim Daly (speaking before the ad aired), “The Super Bowl ad isn’t meant as an aggressive attack on abortion. The message we’re trying to go for is, Yes, there is a choice right now … and I think the better choice is life.”
Duke University theologian Amy Laura Hall, speaking to the Chicago Tribune, questioned the idea of celebrating the “miracle baby” who, despite the odds, was born healthy and grew up to be a Heisman Trophy winner. According to Hall, “The basic gist is clear: Save your pregnancy, wager for life, and you too might win the grand prize of proud motherhood.”
Hall’s point is that parents of special-needs children should be encouraged, too. But she’s essentially making the same point as Joy Behar, who said on The View that Tebow could just as easily have turned out to be a racist or pedophile as a football star. Choosing life—the choice Pam Tebow made—is not gambling on the value of the child, it’s realizing the child has value at all. For Christians, it’s not wagering for life, it’s believing God has plans to give you hope and a future far better than you could plan out for yourself (Jer. 29:11).
If only there could be a whole line of ads saying “I’m (insert name here), and I was almost aborted.” Those children are out there, and whether they grew up to have special needs, a green thumb, an artistic eye, two left feet, or a muscular 6’3″ physique, it is wonderful to hear about them. They should be celebrated, as Focus on the Family’s tagline suggests. Certainly, attaching a celebrity name to the celebration garners more media attention, but that is typical of our society, and focusing attention on the good reasons to not get an abortion—like the children who were allowed to grow up—seems like a good thing.
If we don’t talk about that huge percentage of our generation who came “this close” to being aborted, we are neglecting to point out that life is just as much a “choice” as abortion. And it’s a good one. Beyond that, though, it’s possible that we could be failing the women who think considering abortion, for whatever reason, means they’ve already made their choice, and there’s no going back.
How many women feel like they can’t talk about the fact that abortion crossed their mind? I think we should hear more stories, more often, and more publically from the women who considered—but didn’t have—abortions, and the children who resulted from that choice.
Alicia Cohn previously interned at Christianity Today magazine. She has written for Her.meneutics about stem-cell research, Christmas, Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue, Anne Graham Lotz, parental rights, journalists in North Korea, Juanita Bynum, the Breast Cancer Bible, and The Stoning of Soraya M.
