Football Player Tim Tebow on What Should Happen in Your Womb

How stupid would you feel if you aborted the next Tim Tebow, leaving the world with only tens of thousands of other football players?

That's the nightmare scenario presented in a Focus on the Family ad set to air during the Super Ball. The completely irreplacable Tebow (who's also left his mark on the world by promoting abstinence till marriage) will appear in the ad with his mom, who ignored the advice of doctors to have an abortion after contracting amebic dysentery, and wants to tell you all about that wise decision. (Several organizations are launching letter-writing campaigns to get CBS execs to change their minds about running the ad.)

Tebow, a Heisman trophy winner who does charity work at home and overseas (Last year Tebow spearheaded a fundraising effort for needy children in Florida and the Phillipines)  has always been vocal about his faith. The football star proclaims his religious beliefs in pretty much every interview he does, once stating, "For me, every day includes four things: God, family, academics and football, in that order." He inscribes his face with scripture for games.

But this is the first time Tebow is taking a blatantly conservative message to 90 million viewers.

The exact content of the ad is under wraps. All we know so far is the inspiring theme: "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life." And that, according to James Dobson, founder of the right-wing evangelical organization, the ad comes at a time when "families need to be inspired." And that Focus on the Family probably shelled out 3 million (that's how much CBS is charging for 30 second spots), money gathered not from the coffers of the struggling organization, which has had to lay off hundreds of employees, but private individuals who channeled their money through Focus on the Family specifically to fund the  ad.

CBS has rejected issue advertising in the past. In 2004, the network refused to run ads by both PETA and MoveOn.org: the MoveOn ad made the wildly controversial point that Bush had increased the national deficit; PETA's involved scantily clad women. 

Also too edgy for CBS: the idea that Jesus espoused universal love. In 2004 the United Church of Christ submitted an ad showing a bouncer blocking a gay couple from entering a Church, with the tagline: Jesus Didn't Turn People away. Neither do we.  

The network rejected the Church's ad because it  "touches on and/or takes a position on one side of a current controversial issue of public importance." 

The network has applied its "no advocacy" rule to reject many other issue commercials, while letting other advocacy ads slip through, such as a anti-steroids and anti-smoking ads. The year CBS rejected the MoveOn ad attacking Bush, they aired a commercial from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, prompting a protest petition against the network by MoveOn. The organization accused CBS and Viacom of political favoritism.

"It seems to us the CBS simply defers from those it fears or from whom it wants favor – in this case, the Bush White House" said campaign director Eli Pariser at the time. 

Pariser also pointed out that CBS's decision to turn down MoveOn's anti-Bush ad coincided with a recent White House driven effort to loosen FCC restrictions on network ownership of TV stations.

Basically, the networks do whatever they want, as Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, said in a statement highlighted in Think Progress:

The rules are exactly what the owner of the news medium wants them to be, and they are not rules, they are simply choices. For many news organizations, the rules are governed by such things as taste and accuracy.

Odd that, given that historically Focus on the Family has been anything but tasteful; and their stance on reproductive rights is not exactly moderate and pragmatic:

Focus on the Family opposes abortion under all circumstances, except in the rare instance when the mother's life is threatened by continuing the pregnancy.

Of course, if abortion were made illegal under all circumstances, then millions of U.S. women would risk their lives and health in back-alley abortions the U.S. will finally be flush with all those extra Mozarts and Jesuses and Einsteins and cancer solvers we've been missing out on.

So why is CBS doing this? I imagine that there is not a huge number of CBS execs eager to add the preventable deaths of U.S. women to the 67,000 caused by back alley abortions every year in the world.  Most likely, Tebow's popularity combined with Focus on the Family's cash made the ad too appealing to turn down (Tebow may be more popular with Super Bowl viewers than PETA). Also, the anti-abortion message of the ad is likely to be tricky – CBS would probably not green light Tebow and his mom wielding signs casting women into hell.  The anti-choice message,  most likely revolving around Pam Tebow's story, is likely to be much more sneaky (and heartwarming).

Which makes CBS's decision all the more dangerous. Fortunately there's still time to dissuade network execs from running the commercial. While the initial script has the network's approval, the ad itself still has to be reviewed.

The Women's Media Center has launched a letter-writing campaign asking the CBS board of directors and network execs to ditch the ad. Other organizations, including Change.org and United Chuch of Christ and Care2 are also running petitions. 

Given the history of network cowardice in the face of controversy, these efforts have a good chance of being effective, with your help.