Why the Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad controversy is good for abortion rights supporters

There's been a fair amount of heated discussion over the past week about CBS's decision to accept an ad from noted conservative Christian organization Focus on the Family to be aired during the Super Bowl next weekend. The ad reportedly features Pam Tebow, the mother of Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow, telling a story about how she ignored some doctor's advice that she get an abortion when she fell ill during her pregnancy with him. Cue the usual firestorm of back and forth between women's advocacy groups and various anti-abortion rights figures. In this instance, though, I think that fighting the decision to air the ad is a bad move. Moreover, I think that the airing of the ad has a lot of upsides for the pro-abortion rights movement that become more apparent on further analysis. Consider:

1. No one is likely to be heavily influenced by the ad.
I'm not one to scoff at the effectiveness of advertising, particularly when it relates to a televised event that most people watch for the expressed purpose of seeing expensive commercials. If advertising didn't work, companies wouldn't be lining up to pay 3 million dollars for a 30 second spot. However, I do think that there's a marked difference between a TV ad that aims to convince you that Bud Light is suitable for human consumption and one that aims to talk you into reconsidering the desirability of abortion rights. And based on the description of the ad, it's not even going to be that heavy-handed. Clearly, Focus on the Family's hoping that the inspirational story of Tim Tebow's mom will convince some abortion rights supporters to change their stance, lest they be complicit in the deprivation of the nation's collegiate athletics recruiters of twenty years from now, but that doesn't mean it's going to happen. Most likely, the reactions of viewers to the ad are just going to reflect their pre-existing beliefs about abortion and things will carry on much the same as they have been.

2. Featuring an athlete in this role is kind of a dumb move that can easily backfire.
In the pantheon of things I can bring myself to give a shit about, college football is about on par with the market price of soybeans. A large part of this is undoubtedly due to the fact that I went to a college that ruthlessly enforces a minimum 27 ACT score for admission and is located in one of the least desirable places to live in America, thus ensuring that nobody even remotely talented at football would be willing or able to go there. As a result, I only barely knew who Tim Tebow was before this whole ad firestorm kicked up. Upon some cursory research, I learned that he's the heir apparent to my longtime nemesis Kurt Warner in combing dual talents at quarterbacking and irritating hyper-proselytization. I also learned that he is dating, or was once photographed standing next to, a woman with an insane rack:
But although my apathy regarding college football runs deep and wide, a substantial portion of America is fanatical about it. Like the abortion debate, college football tends to be a hyper-partisan affair; people have their lifelong allegiances and focus most of their cheering on whatever is going to best benefit their favorite team. So while I'm sure Florida Gators fans will lap up the Tim Tebow Super Bowl as with a spoon, I'm willing to bet that a good percentage of the rest of the college football fans in the country will be wishing that his mom had gone ahead and had that abortion, if only because it could have helped their alma mater get a slightly higher ranking going into Bowl season this year. It would have been more effective if Focus on the Family had gotten somebody more universally beloved, like Justin Timberlake, to star in the ad.

3. It's probably a huge financial boondoggle for Focus on the Family.
While Focus on the Family is putting up north of 2.5 million dollars for this 30 second ad, these aren't exactly boom times for the organization, which has laid off almost 300 employees in the past year and a half. The organization claims that the money for the ad came from donations, not their general fund, but you have to figure that anyone who likes Focus on the Family enough to give them money for the purposes of running an ad would probably also have given them that money to help them keep the lights on, so I think it's safe to say that there's some measure of financial sacrifice involved here. Since the ad doesn't appear to be selling anything except for the idea that each aborted fetus may be costing the world yet another Jesus-powered football wunderkind, I'm skeptical that Focus is going to recoup on expenses. For those who are ideologically opposed to their agenda, each dollar that Focus on the Family spends on this ad is a dollar they aren't spending pushing "cures" for homosexuality or branding mainstream entertainment as "cultural terrorism."

4. The ad actually supports the pro-abortion rights point of view.
Hey, Mrs. Tebow chose life and she loves her son and is proud of his accomplishments. Good for her! It's refreshing to see an adult speak plainly about exercising her autonomy and making a decision that reflects her personal values. Isn't it wonderful to live in a time where the autonomy of citizens to make difficult choices about reproduction is respected and encouraged?

Yes, it is. But if Focus on the Family had their way about things, we wouldn't be living in one. The truly incredible thing about this debate is that relatively few abortion rights supporters have stopped to point out that the dramatic tension, so to speak, in Tebow's mom's story is entirely due to the fact that she had the legal right to seek an abortion if she so chose. Without that element, it would be a fairly mundane story: she conceived and gave birth to a baby despite some complications. Contrary to the picture painted by fringe elements of the religious right, most proponents of abortion rights aren't misanthopic genocidists who earn a commission on each fetal termination performed, they're people who believe that decisions about reproduction are an inviolate matter of personal liberty. Focus on the Family wants us to applaud the choice that Pam Tebow made and ignore that the people who paid for the ad really wish that she had been denied any opportunity to make that choice in the first place. The most powerful message that abortion rights supporters can send about the Tebow Super Bowl ad is to highlight that simple fact.

RIP Jim Poullion, the perfect figurehead for the anti-abortion rights movement

Having lived in the rural Midwest as much as I have, I've had my fair share of run-ins with professional Christian protesters. I remember one time in college, this guy came on campus carrying two signs about repentance and started yelling at everyone passing by the student union about how they were all going to hell, presumably for fucking outside of marriage. Predictably enough, some girl with cropped hair showed up maybe 20 minutes later with a handmade sign bearing some quote from Charles Bukowski about how he doesn't like God, and the two of them screamed at each other for a while. I read later in the school paper that this guy apparently travels all over Missouri to do this, and he pretty much hits every college campus in the state over the course of a given year.

On Friday, James Poullion, an anti-abortion protester in Oswesso, MI was killed in a drive-by shooting while waving placards outside the local high school. Predictably enough, anti-abortion rights groups were quick to issue press releases declaring his martyrdom for the cause and some commentators are noting the lack of outrage in the media in comparison to the response to the murder of Dr. George Tiller in May. I'm sure that somebody soon will point out that before yesterday, approximately nobody had ever heard of the town of Oswesso, MI, much less the name James Poullion, whereas Tiller was a nationally known figure who was a frequent target of vitriol on Bill O'Reilly's highly rated nightly TV commentary show and had already survived a previous shooting.

Nobody's going to care about that, though. The narrative is going to be pro and anti-abortion rights groups dropping bodies in a national turf war. Expect the typical hyperventilation (op-eds from representatives of NARAL and Operation Rescue in the Times, Post, and Wall Street Journal, cable-TV shouting matches galore, an episode of Law and Order) that permeates every aspect of the Kabuki theater we know as "the abortion issue." Every aspect of this has become ridiculous, from the abortion rights crowd's insistence on labeling themselves "pro-choice" (as if the other side wants to revoke your right to take the Pepsi Challenge) and the anti-abortion rights crowd's adoption of "pro-life" (like abortion rights activists are advocating mass slaughter of the nation's grandmothers, the fulminations of Sarah Palin aside).

James Poullion didn't deserve to die for his beliefs or for exercising his First Amendment rights to express them, nor does anybody else in the anti-abortion rights movement. That disclaimer aside, let's not beat around the bush here: based on the facts of his life as they're being reported right now, James Poullion wasn't a holy warrior doing the Lord's work; he was a crusty old asshole who lived to piss people off. For the last 20 years, he's been camped out on various sidewalks in Oswesso on a daily basis, waving pictures of bloody fetuses and screaming at people. He spent so much time outside the high school doing this that the students nicknamed him "Sign Man," which I take as an indicator that Oswesso High School isn't likely to produce the next H.L. Mencken anytime soon. He also apparently hung out in front of the local Cadillac dealer waving his signs around for years, as if people were going to stop in to cop the car note on an Escalade before heading to the clinic. The owner tried to have a restraining order taken out on him and lost. He even picketed a local church, presumably because they spent more time singing hymns and enjoying fellowship over coffee and donuts than raining fire and brimstone on the community.

He did all of this day after day, year after year in a town of just over 15,000 people. Let's estimate that about half of that population is female, and maybe two-thirds of the women are of childbearing age. That's about 3, 750 people. Poullion probably could have fucked around and protested outside of T.J. Maxx on Saturday mornings and reached as many of them as he did by treating protesting like a full-time job. There's other stuff he could have done instead. He could have started a blog or a newsletter. He could have gotten an AM radio show. He could have even set up one of those phony crisis pregnancy centers that people of his ideological persuasion are so high on.

The fact that he chose a method of protest that is arguably the least effective and certainly the most irritating isn't a coincidence. In fact, if Poullion becomes a national figurehead for the anti-abortion rights movement, as he probably will for at least the next three months or so, it'll only be fitting. You see, the anti-abortion movement isn't really interested in formulating cultural or policy changes regarding human reproduction. What these junior Ceauşescus care about is getting all up in your shit about things that are your own personal business and using your reaction as the sum total of your moral worth. And if you pissed off at them for it, so much the better for them. Nothing is more appealing to a these people than the opportunity to feed their ravenous persecution complex. I'd hazard a guess that if there is an afterlife, Jim Poullion is looking down on us completely delighted that his violent death will nab free national airtime for the likes of Randall Terry in the coming days.