It's not surprising that the response to the Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad was a collective, "All that fuss for that?" The spot mostly features his mom, Pam Tebow gushing about her miracle baby, only to be tackled by the son who grew up to be a Heisman Trophy winner. Both had big smiles for the camera.
Of course, the spot directed you to the Web site for Focus on the Family, the conservative, anti-abortion group that funded the spot. There you can watch an interview with Pam Tebow and her husband, Bob, who elaborate a little on the back story. The Tebows were in the Philippines as missionaries when she became pregnant with Tim, their fifth child, and the pregnancy was complicated from the start. We know from other sources how likely it was that Pam Tebow's condition could have killed her, and why her doctors would have recommended an abortion to save her life. At the end, Bob Tebow makes a tearful plea to the camera: "Don't kill your baby." Drats! Feminists' nefarious baby-killing plans foiled again! This, right after Pam Tebow encourages women to seek help and recognize they have options. Again, it seems like the Tebows think women only have one real choice, and it's hard to respect their message when that one choice could kill a lot of women. The ad could have seemed so innocuous just so anti-abortion groups could decry unwarranted feminist hysteria, which they were already doing. But as Amanda Marcotte points out on Double X, it's really not so innocuous when you know the back story. Tim plowing into his mother carries double symbolic weight when you think he nearly killed her in utero and that the image of a man plowing over a woman is exactly the kind of misogynistic symbol you would expect from an anti-abortion group. -- Monica Potts
