THAT was the controversial anti-abortion ad?

You should have seen some of the seething letters to the Editor in the L.A. Times and San Francisco Chronicle this weekend authored by liberals. They were outraged about the prospect of being subjected to the commercial (sex and vulgarity is fine; a pro-life messages - at least when it comes to fetuses - make them squeemish). A few wrote they would not watch any Super Bowl commercials to avoid being exposed to the Tebow commercial. These and other objecting liberals looked like fanatical, close-minded, pro-abortion reactionaries before the commercial was aired; once it aired, their prior protests made them look entirely foolish as well.

Well, you know how it is with Libs - anything that remotely hints at actual life in the womb, anything that even suggests the possibility of life in the womb that actually has worth, just ticks them off! Actually it's more of a slap against a Creator-God; lots of luck on that one! They are going to need it! Conservatives have to deal with real life & real facts, libs are not so constrained.

The Tebow commercial was in no way controversial. I was offended by all the half dressed people in many of the commercials not that anybody cares about that trash.

The title of your blog was my exact reaction to the ad. I agree that it would have pretty much gone unnoticed and unheralded had there not been such an uproar about it. The controversy only served to make sure the ad was seen. Focus on the Family couldn't have bought more effective publicity!!

The Constitution is waved in everyones face by Conservatives, yet when it comes to women's rights they want the Government to tell them what to do. Doesn't sound anything like freedom to me.

One of these days TC you'll understand what it means to support freedom of choice. You continue to villify those you don't agree with while you scream about your freedom of speech. Why is it you feel so inclined to control everyone else's lives and dictate to them what they can and can't do? You're against big government doing that, why do you do it?

Let me explain something. Those who support a woman's right to choose understand that it's a tough decision and not all situations are the same. Everyone is pro-life. Terminating a pregnancy is not an easy decision and not a decision that should be made by the government or by you or anyone else who isn't immediately involved. People who support a woman's right to choose understand that they are not in her shoes, do not know her situation and can not possibly make that decision for her.

According to the National Right To Life website there are over a million abortions performed every year. According to the Adoption Institute,
"estimates indicate the foster care population decreased from 581,000 to 556,000 between 1999 and 2000. The number of children waiting to be adopted, however, increased to about 134,000 during the same period. Early estimates for 2001 show the foster care population marginally increased to 565,000."

If a woman were no longer allowed to terminate an unwanted pregnancy we could add over a million unwanted children per year to the already 500,000 children looking for a home and someone to love them. Who's going to pay for that? If these kids who've been in and out of random homes all of their lives, many suffering unspeakable pain and suffering, reach 18 years old without a home they are turned loose on their own. No longer a burden to the state. What happens to them then?

When you say something like:

"Well, you know how it is with Libs - anything that remotely hints at actual life in the womb, anything that even suggests the possibility of life in the womb that actually has worth, just ticks them off!"

It makes me realize what an absolute idiot you really are. But, after all, you have your freedom of speech and you're free to call 'em the way you see 'em. But you should know, this liberal cried when he saw his first child on an ultrasound for the first time. Unfortunately, not all babies are as welcome and loved as my 3 girls are.

Those who criticized the Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad before they even saw it must be feeling pretty foolish about now.

Mr. Rutten's momentary aversion to profound confrontation should have been eased by the Bud-lite commercial about the asteroid, hilarious! I don't believe it was though, he shows me obvious signs of a deep cold social engineer. Those folks give me the creeps, glad they are about to get marginalized. Anyway, the Audi commercial seems to have gotten folks worked up in a lather, but I liked that one also...very sublime.

I guess by now, everyone knows there is a new sheriff in town, we're just going to have to suck it up. Hey Scott, I was wondering if your photographer was on a ladder inside a man hole when that photo was taken. The perspective gave you a rather superior advantage, was this intentional? Anyway nice hog, I was impressed by the front fender. I've ridden a couple of miles on various motorcycles in my life and could never understand why anyone would want water thrown directly into the front of their body. I rode a British Triumph, Daytona 500cc (right side shift) in the rain alot when I was living there. Actually it is better said, I rarely rode when it was sunny. That and the less than positive camber of roads, especially wet ones, in the idyllic English countryside made life pretty interesting. Triumphs had fine steering geometry for that time. The old gal in a Manchester garage who'd worked on Triumphs, Nortons and BSAs for thirty years kept mine tuned up, "you got yourself a fine iron horse there laddy," she'd say. "Be careful now." I can to this day remember her image waving good bye in my mirror when I pulled out onto the street. By the way, all this wordy support for everybody elses rights may feel convenient now but what if Obama, Pelosi and Reid made it a one child healthcare package? That would be a nice choice wouldn't it? Just like in progressive Red China. I guarantee you the same people who allow this nonsense at taxpayer expense have their elitist medical crosshairs your pet hog, with or without a front fender. Good luck, enjoy the ride while the ride can be enjoyed.

Back when I was younger, and dinosaurs roamed the earth unabated, (not to mention big-block Chryslers BIGGER than the Hemi of the ad,)

Dr. Dobson was really cool.
The guy wrote decent books that were pretty easy to understand that gave good advice on things that people were trying to do right because they cared about them, --and he made no bones about his faith, (also no problem) and they were pretty beneficial (whether you ascribed to his religious beliefs or not.)

That was a long time ago.

I knew twenty some odd years ago, when I had friends who actually worked for Focus on the Family that things were going from a personal and humble (and very effective) path --to one that was more broadcast and far more political.

It's too bad.
It took helping people in a sincere and genuine way, that was pretty intimate with one's beliefs and such, --and has turned it into a machine.
(Now, the machine has basically always been there... the Church is no stranger to heavy marketing and broadbrushing... --but at least back in the 70's and 80's it appeared to be a more organic more 'if you choose to read this it may help, --if you choose not, that's fine too, this is just one man's opinion..'
-which garnished a lot of respect.

These days?
A lot of conservative and liberal Christians (myself included,) have backed away from Focus on the Family, smelling more steel, marketing, and machine with an agenda
-not so much the forgiveness, mercy, kindness, grace, and warmth of Christ.

Funny thing?
If you didn't know about any of that, --or any of the controversy?
You'd have no clue as to what that ad was about... (Other than this kid and his Mom were grateful for each other...
-A message Dobson and his crew started out with, still has plastered to the nose of their locomotive, but has so much different running behind it.'

The funniest reaction to the ad came from the NOW Gang saying it showed violence against women. However, they were mum about Betty White being tackled. Hypocrisy perhaps?

Bee Sting, the "constitutional right" to kill a baby is the product of one of the most tortured judicial decisions ever rendered. Even liberal, pro-choice law professors like Alan Dershowitz question the legal reasoning of Roe v. Wade. I pray (in vain I fear) that Roe is one day overturned.

Scot, the otherwise salutary and benign phrase - "right to choose" - is used to redirect the focus away from the end game of abortion: The intentional termination of an innocent life. If it were otherwise, it would not be a difficult decision (as you admit).

And when it comes to "choice," pro-choice advocates always focus on the "rights" of the woman (who had a choice whether to engage in sex or not). What about the rights of the baby inside the woman? (I use the term "baby" because women do not use the term "fetus" to describe the child that lies inside their womb.) If the baby could speak, would the baby choose life? Of course the baby would. (After all, do any of you wish you had been aborted?) Government, even limited government, must stand up for the rights of the baby. Sure, I believe in limited government; however, I also believe that such a government can outlaw the murder of innocent life.

If abortion were illegal, would there be more unwanted babies? Yes, there would. But I strongly disagree that is a reason to support a right to abort. Such a position can logically be restated as follows: In order to save children from being unwanted, we should kill them in advance. All innocent life is precious, whether the child is wanted or unwanted by the child's biological parents.

it's sort of funny to talk about this in the 'dog vs cat' section of the local (only) fishwrap, but here goes.

(Regardless of one's personal stance.)

Look up all through history.

Has a government ever been successful in legislating 'morality?'

And that's the point (because the answer is 'no.')
That nobody really wants to arrive at, (because then they'll have to have something else to stand and throw rocks back and forth, over.)

(newsflash)
-you can't 'make' people do stuff.
You can't make them 'have kids'
-you can't make them 'get rid of kids.'
-You can't make them practice safe sex,
-or any sex, or no sex,
-or keep their pants on, or off...

-You can't make them 'stay married,' or apart,
-and you can't make them treat their kids properly (married or not,) be they rich or in the ghetto.
People are going to do what they want to do... (govt. or no.)

We just don't seem to want to 'get that.'
It's a waste of energy and effort.

If you outlawed 'abortion'
--there'd still be abortions and people terminating pregnancies same as ever, --and no 'law' is going to stop that.

So, (if)
folks are so 'concerned' about the state of pregnancy, unwed mothers, difficult pregnancy, 'lives of unborn and born children.'
and such (like they claim?)

Why not (actually) provide an environment where (if) someone is pregnant, --and thinking of terminating?

-Finding out WHY, --and seeing if (big IF) things were different,
--they may decide to carry the child full term, then put it up for adoption, (or even keep the child and raise it?)

What nobody is facing, nor giving any credit to the woman is:
When a woman is faced with 'not having this baby.'
They go through unreal personal questioning, --and often requestion and wonder, --for years, decades afterwards.
Pregnant people realize that they're carrying human life.
I've yet to meet a woman, (who's either terminated or carried full term) a pregnancy that has NOT gotten that fact, and realized the magnitude of what was going on.
None of them really 'wanted' to terminate.
(It's just never come up as a 'first choice.')

It's not the 'usual' response to terminate a pregnancy, (it's abnormal.)
I'm not saying that the woman is 'abnormal,'
--she (if choosing such a thing,) is more than likely resorting to what she feels is the only real and sane outcome.

-And (to go a bit deeper into it,)
IF we really DO care?

We have to ask 'why' that is the answer she comes up with. (And then want to help.)

-Shocking to know, but there most definitely are circumstances, not just seen by the individual pregnant woman,
--but possibly her entire family and those closest to her, --that clearly state
'..the only thing right to do here, is give the baby back to God.'

What gets me?

Nobody wants to face that.

(I mean, believe me, the pregnant mom faces it all the time, and never stops facing it.)

But for all the people who are so hell-fire-sure that abortion is wrong, --and should be outlawed.
I'm asking you straight out:

What are YOU doing in this world, (heck, this town,) either individually, or as a member of your group that feels this way (church, whatever,)
---to truly support and care for this unborn child that you're so worried about, --AND the child's parent(s)?
And give them a realistic other option?

Because, what I'm hearing in this (be it in the argument capital of the country (Fresno) or not...

A whole bunch of people saying what a woman is supposed to do,
--but nobody pony'ng up to really understand the situation, --or help her (and the kid.)
Just pass judgement on 'how things are supposed to be.'

I mean, I expect that here, in Fresno, (that's our chief crop,) and I expect it in the conservative church.

You'd just think that somebody somewhere'd step back, use the brains God gave 'em and realize,
'..ya know bubba?, we gotta find a different way to care about this, here, --cause so far?
we suck at it, and it ain't gett'n any prettier...'

I agree that the outrage over the ad was blown out of proportion, just like every outrage these days is blown out of proportion. Disproportionate outrage makes a great distraction! Does anybody remember how freaked out the nation was over Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction"? I wonder what the outrage would have been had commercials for Trojan Condoms or KY "his and hers" jells ran during the game?

Abortion rights are about more than irresponsible parents and unwanted children. They are about access to reproductive health care. The immediate impact of criminalizing abortion would be more dead mothers. It is estimated that placental abruption, the difficulty that Pam Tebow experienced, is responsible for approximately 6% of maternal deaths. To quote William Saletan from slate.com, "No doubt some of these women trusted in God and said no to abortion, as she did. But they didn't end up with Heisman-winning sons. They ended up dead." (The Invisible Dead - Feb. 1, 2010).

Most of you people completely missed the point of why people were against the focus/family ad being shown.
It had nothing to do with the ads content. After accepting the focus ad, the NFL people refused to allow a similar pro-choice ad to be shown.

xix,
How could there be a "similar pro-choice ad"? The Focus on the Family commercial hardly implied, let alone specifically mentioned, abortion. Unless you already knew the Tebow story, how could you interpret it as anything but just a feel-good message? I would be curious as to the exact content of the Planned Parenthood pro-choice ad which was rejected -- was it equally ambiguous?

Racism is not a factor in this issue. Even if it was it would give the opportunity for that ethnic group or person to make their decision not take it away.

-----

Women of all different ages, educational levels, racial and ethnic groups, social and economic classes and religions find it necessary to have an abortion when faced with accidental pregnancy, shows a new survey of nearly 10,000 abortion patients conducted by The Alan Guttmacher Institute in 1994-1995. About half of all U.S. women will have an abortion at some point in their lives. While abortion rates among young, unmarried, poor and minority women are the highest, rates among those of religious, racial and ethnic groups thought to oppose abortion are high as well.

• one in five women having abortions are born-again or Evangelical Christians;

"...Choice is the essence of freedom. It's what we African Americans have struggled for all these years. The right to choose where we would sit on a bus. The right to vote. The right for each of us to select our own paths, to dream and reach for our dreams. The right to choose how we would or would not live our lives.

This freedom--to choose and to exercise our choices--is what we've fought and died for. Brought here in chains, worked like mules, bred like beasts, whipped one day, sold the next--244 years we were held in bondage. Somebody said that we were less than human and not fit for freedom. Somebody said we were like children and could not be trusted to think for ourselves. Somebody owned our flesh and decided if and when and with whom and how our bodies were to be used. Somebody said that black women could be raped, held in concubinage, forced to bear children year in and year out, but often not raise them. Oh, yes, we have known how painful it is to be without choice in this land.

Those of us who remember the bad old days when Jim Crow rules and segregation were the way of things know the hardships and indignities we faced. We were free, but few or none were our choices. Somebody said where we could live and couldn't, where we could work, what schools we could go to, where we could eat, how we could travel. Somebody prevented us from voting. Somebody said we could be paid less than other workers. Somebody burned crosses, harassed and terrorized us in order to keep us down.

Now once again, somebody is trying to say that we can't handle the freedom of choice. Only this time they're saying African-American women can't think for themselves and, therefore, can't be allowed to make serious decisions. Somebody's saying that we should not have the freedom to take charge of our personal lives and protect our health, that we only have limited rights over our bodies. Somebody's once again forcing women to acts of desperation, because somebody's saying that if women have unintended pregnancies, it's too bad, but they must pay the price.

Somebody's saying that we must have babies whether we choose to or not. Doesn't matter what we say, doesn't matter how we feel. Some say that abortion under any circumstance is wrong, others say that rape and incest and danger to the life of the woman are the only exceptions. Doesn't matter that nobody's saying who decides if it was rape or incest, if a woman's word is good enough, if she must go into court and prove it. Doesn't matter that she may not be able to take care of a baby, that the problem also affects girls barely out of adolescence, that our children are having children. Doesn't matter if you're poor and pregnant--go on welfare or walk away..."

Original Signers:

Byllye Avery (National Black Women's Health Project)
Rev. Willie Barrow (Operation Push)
Donna Brazile (Housing Now)
Shirley Chisholm (National Political Congress of Black Women)
Representative Cardiss Collins (U.S. Congress)
Romona Edelin (National Urban Coalition)
Jacqui Gates (National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Clubs, Inc.)
Marcia Ann Gillespie (Ms. Magazine)
Dorothy Height (National Council of Negro Women)
Jewel Jackson McCabe (National Coalition of 100 Black Women)
Julianne Malveaux (San Francisco Black Leadership Forum)
Eleanor Holmes Norton (Georgetown University Law School)
C. Delores Tucker (DNC Black Caucus)
Patricia Tyson (Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights)
Maxine Waters (Black Women's Forum)
Faye Wattleton (Planned Parenthood Federation of America)

http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/book/companion.asp?id=20&compID=41

T.C. - Thanks for bringing Margaret Sanger to my attention. I had never heard of her before so I did some research, and she has certainly said some despicable things. Let's read some more:

"Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying
... demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism ...
[Philanthropists] encourage the healthier and more normal sections of the
world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of
others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead
weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the
stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world,
it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant ... We are paying
for, and even submitting to, the dictates of an ever-increasing,
unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born
at all."

or.....

"The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless
ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts.
Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper
element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their
support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the
procreation of this group should be stopped."

and.....

"There is only one reply to a request for a higher birthrate among the
intelligent, and that is to ask the government to first take the burden of
the insane and feeble-minded from your back. [Mandatory] sterilization for
these is the answer."

She sounds like a radical conservative.....wait.....she sounds like a female Rush Limbaugh. At any rate, allow me to give the whole quote you took that snippet from:

"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with
social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most
successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal.
We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro
population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if
it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

All in all, these quotes are from the 1920s and she was trying to advocate a new concept called birth control. Times have changed, birth control methods have changed and evolved, and the choice to abort a pregnancy is for very different reasons. You can't possibly link the debate today of a woman's right to choose regarding her own body with that woman from the 20s and her wacky ideology. Planned Parenthood is a much different organization in the last 50 years than what she founded in the early part of the 20th century.

As far as the racial figures you put up...what does that have to do with the tea in China?

Look....I agree, abortion isn't nice. It isn't pretty and it isn't easy, and should never be used as a form of birth control. I don't advocate abortion, and I don't think anybody since Margaret Sanger really does either. I just don't think it's a decision for a bunch of 3rd party people, especially men, with their own beliefs and motives to decide for each and every woman in each and every circumstance. One size does not fit all. I'm sorry for the unborn fetus, or baby if you'd rather, it's sad, but sometimes it's for the best and that's not the government's decision. After all, aren't we tired of government legislating our personal lives? I would much rather see the anti-abortion groups set up counseling centers and try to prevent the decision to abort, and actively find adoptive parents rather than carry on this war where some radicals blow up abortion clinics or shoot abortion doctors in their own church and feel it's justified.

For what it's worth, I have two very good friends, Ryan and Jonathan, who just adopted their first baby girl and they are just ecstatic. They've been together for almost 15 years and were going to be married but that's on hold right now obviously. Anyway, they have been so excited for months waiting for her to be born, doting over the birth mother (who chose them to raise her baby), taking care of her and then being in the delivery room with her. They've got a whole nursery in their house with everything you can imagine and are finding out what it's like to take turns being up with a new baby every night just like we all did. There's a lot to be said for adoption. They can't stop smiling and she has two very loving dads who just can't put her down.

I am beginning to question the value of contributions to this blog, especially my own sometimes. TC Morgan's opinions, and others, consistantly present time honored ideas which have no doubt assisted in the survival of civilization. They are commonly rejected with counter-ideas which are dressed up in costumes, not revealing the aiding and abeting actions which are perpetrated on their behalf. If a few of you sometimes go away feeling as though you are having your hat handed to you there is a reason, because you are.