To Ms. Tebow at the Super Bowl: You Had a Choice

by Megan Tackney, Program Associate, 
National Women's Law Center

We would like to give Ms. Tebow a one-person-in-a-quiet-room round of applause for having the opportunity to make the choice that was right for her.

Recently, CBS has found itself front and center in a debate over an ad about abortion to be run during the Super Bowl by the controversial organization, Focus on the Family. The ad features Pam Tebow, mother of football player Tim Tebow, talking about her decision to continue her pregnancy even after doctors told her that her life was in danger if she went through with the pregnancy.

Ms. Tebow had an important decision to make that many women face every day. Provided with her options, she chose to keep the pregnancy. In coming forward and describing her experience, we would like to say: thank you Ms. Tebow (and CBS) for reminding us how hard that choice must have been for you. We hope that you will not forget to highlight the part of your story where you were asked, “What do you think you should do?” In the chaos of script writing, please don’t skip over that line about the choice you were given.

And in that message to women watching the Super Bowl, I hope many won’t think that you are criticizing them should they make the hard choice to end their own pregnancy.

As the face of choice, we hope that you won’t disregard the stories of many other women while you are telling your own. Please don’t mislead the millions watching the Super Bowl into thinking that we should remove the right of choice, the one you so coveted in that doctor's office.

But that’s not what you are trying to do, is it?