Choice?

This Sunday, February 7, is Super Bowl Sunday (it is also my father's 79th birthday, but that is another topic). As a part of the Super Bowl telecast there is to be a commercial that was produced by Focus on the Family featuring Tim Tebow and his mother. Tim is a college football player and 2007 Heisman trophy winner. What the ad has to say is that when Tim's mom was pregnant with him, she was advised to abort him due to a bout with ameobic dysentery. She decided to leave things in God's hands and gave birth to a healthy baby boy who went on to become a great football player, but more than that, he also grew into a man after God's own heart.

The fact that this ad is to be played on national (international?) television has many, many groups up in arms right now. My denomination, the United Church of Christ is feeling slighted due to the fact that an ad that was created for it a few years ago was rejected by CBS. Women's groups such as NOW who uphold abortion as being a woman's 'right', are also objecting to the commercial. Never mind that no one, absolutely no one has seen the commercial yet. All anyone knows about it is its subject matter.

So that leads me to the following question: What is so terrible about a commercial that celebrates life? What is so objectionable or, to use a word that the women's groups have been batting around, divisive about a mother speaking of loving her son so much that she chose to give him life? Don't all those women's groups, after all, call themselves pro-CHOICE?

When I was just beginning my teen years, the women's liberation movement had just really taken off. I resonated with the rhetoric about how women should be able to choose what sort of career that they pursued as an adult, that there should not be any restraints put on them solely because of their gender. If a woman wanted to be a brick layer, she should be able to pursue that. If she wanted to be a lawyer or a doctor or a lumberjack, she should be allowed to pursue those career paths as well. If a woman choose to stay at home, raising children and not working outside of her home, more power to her. And it was with this last statement of mine that I found that what most in the 'liberation movement' meant was not a total freedom to choose, but a freedom to choose a career that previously had been dominated by males. For them a woman who actually chose to stay at home, having and raising babies was a waste, a throw back, a betrayal of the entire female gender. And that is when I stopped being a feminist and a women's liberator because it was obvious to me that what the women who claimed those titles were really all about was having things their way, not about freeing women up to have choices.

And so it is with abortion. It is not really, truly about a woman's 'right' to choose. It is about doing it their way, because if it was really all about choice, they would also be celebrating that the choice that Mrs. Tebow made for herself and her son has turned out so wonderfully. They would be celebrating the positive, uplifting message of hope that I am told will be presented. Since I am quite familiar with Focus on the Family and its quality programs, I have no reason to doubt that the commercial will be anything but a quality uplifting, positive message about love and life. To those who are complaining about the ad, what is wrong with that??