Abortion Advocates Rebuked for Saying Pam Tebow Lying About Pregnancy
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
February 2, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Abortion advocates are continuing their campaign to discredit Pam Tebow by saying she is lying about her pregnancy story when she says doctors advised her to have an abortion of Tim Tebow. But several newspaper and other columnists say they are the ones stretching the truth.
Feminist attorney Gloria Allred started off the campaign to discredit Tebow, who appears in a new Focus on the Family Super Bowl ad with her son, the star college football player.
The ad reportedly will share the Tebow birth story of how Tebow was on a missions trip to the Philippines and, when she contracted dysentery from tainted food or water, she took heavy medication and her doctor suggested an abortion because the drugs could harm her baby.
She refused and Tebow has gone on to win the Heisman Trophy and lead the Florida Gators to a national championship.
Today, in an email LifeNews.com obtained from the Feminist Majority Foundation, one of the original groups to call on CBS to cancel the ad, the allegation continues.
"The implicit suggestion that pregnant women whose health is at risk shouldn’t worry because nothing bad will happen is downright dangerous, even if the story is true," FMF president Kim Gandy contends.
"What the ad does not tell you is that Tebow’s mother fell ill in the Philippines, where abortion has been illegal since 1930 (even to protect the woman’s life) and is punishable with prison time for both the woman and the doctor. So, the Tebow story appears to be a fabrication – yet CBS has not acted on this information," Gandy claims.
But Orlando Sentinel newspaper writer Mike Bianchi says the Tebows and Focus on the Family are being “Swiftboated” by Allred and these abortion advocates.
He says they "should be ashamed" of themselves.
"Pam Tebow said doctors recommended she should get an abortion. She never said doctors recommended she should get an abortion in the Philippines," he noted. "The fact is Pam Tebow is an American citizen and could have easily flown back to the United States to get an abortion at any number of abortion clinics throughout this country. She chose not to."
For pro-abortion activists to "to try and ‘Swiftboat’ Pam Tebow by questioning the honesty of her story is political partisanship at its ugliest and dirtiest," Bianchi writes.
Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins got her in shots in today against fellow abortion advocates for condemning the ad, saying "Tebow’s Super Bowl ad isn’t intolerant, its critics are."
"I’ll spit this out quick, before the armies of feminism try to gag me and strap electrodes to my forehead: Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time," she fumes. "I realize this stance won’t endear me to the ‘Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep,’ otherwise known as DOLL, but I’ll try to pick up the shards of my shattered feminist credentials and go on."
"I’m pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I’ve heard in the past week, I’ll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension," from abortion advocates.
"Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell," she continued. "Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it."
"Here’s what we do need a lot more of: Tebows. Collegians who are selfless enough to choose not to spend summers poolside, but travel to impoverished countries to dispense medical care to children, as Tebow has every summer of his career. Athletes who believe in something other than themselves, and are willing to put their backbone where their mouth is. Celebrities who are self-possessed and self-controlled enough to use their wattage to advertise commitment over decadence," Jenkins continues.
"You know what we really need more of? Famous guys who aren’t embarrassed to practice sexual restraint, and to say it out loud. If we had more of those, women might have fewer abortions," she adds.
"Trouble is, you can’t focus on the game without focusing on the individuals who play it — and that is the genius of Tebow’s ad. The Super Bowl is not some reality-free escape zone. Tebow himself is an inescapable fact: Abortion doesn’t just involve serious issues of life, but of potential lives, Heisman trophy winners, scientists, doctors, artists, inventors, Little Leaguers — who would never come to be if their birth mothers had not wrestled with the stakes and chosen to carry those lives to term. And their stories are every bit as real and valid as the stories preferred by NOW," Jenkins writes.
"CBS owns its broadcast and can run whatever advertising it wants, and Tebow has a right to express his beliefs publicly," she said. "If the pro-choice stance is so precarious that a story about someone who chose to carry a risky pregnancy to term undermines it, then CBS is not the problem."
Jenkins notes that the Tebow ad never mentions abortion, but Focus on the Family has the tag, "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life."
The candid comments follow a surprising editorial from the New York Times defending the ad and the Tebow family.
Related web sites:
Support Tebow’s Super Bowl Ad – https://www.facebook.com/TebowSuperBowlAd
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