Arguments like this end up reinforcing the notion that legal abortion is good for all women’s rights and dignity, even if they really believe they would never have an abortion.  Pam Tebow, Sarah Palin, Bristol Palin—-if abortion wasn’t a legal option, they wouldn’t be celebrated for their choices.  They would be just another woman, whose opinions and choices were utterly irrelevant. 

In order to be “pro-life” heroes, they need choice.  Without it, they get no praise and no respect.  They need us to get this treatment.

I am kind of taken back (besides being disgusted that they would even run this, I wonder if they would run a real feminist choice ad during the Super Bowl?) by this woman saying that her husband prayed that she would have a son and they’d be able to raise him.

First, the obviously problem with him praying for a son, but also, WHAT THE FUCK?

If I got this news and my bf was sitting there, I know for a fact he’d be lobbying for the abortion.  Cause you know, my life at stake and he kind of likes having me around.

I guess it’s a good thing I’m not one of these freaks, because look at the men you have make a life with?

God, is Tim Tebow irritating, or what?  The coverage of every football game he’s in becomes the “watch Tim Tebow be emotional” show.  Look!  He’s yelling at his teammates!  Look!  He’s thanking God and stuff!  Look, he’s crying because his team didn’t win the SEC championship!  Who cares about Alabama, lets watch Tim Tebow cry!

Friend of mine had a complete placental abruption while grocery shopping at 26 weeks’ gestation. She was lucky: The ambulance came swiftly and transported her to the best hospital in Chicago (not the closest one to the grocery store). The emergency C-section saved the baby (who remained in the NICU for four months) and kept my friend from hemorrhaging further. Placental abruption has a 20% to 40% mortality rate in the fetus, and it can endanger the woman’s life.

I hope women watching the Super Bowl ad who later end up with a placental abruption won’t have taken home the message that abruption is no biggie, you just have to do some bed rest and everything will be OK. There are no such guarantees.

I don’t think the antis really give a shit if that’s the effect.  The hard core activist ones think that dying in pregnancy is really nifty, a way for a woman to show she’s all in when it comes to the patriarchy.

Of course, this also works the other way. The fetus you so callously aborted could have grown up to be a famous serial killer, or a mass shooter, or a terrorist.

In fact, I’d say the latter way is the more likely way.

Yeah, what’s so heroic about not having a choice at all?

Also, where’s the stories about the mothers who didn’t have a choice (as Philippines, for instance) who then die?

WTF, man.

There’s a lot of Catholic anti-choice porn that celebrates women who die in childbirth, but again, they focus on women who had a choice, proving yet again that even anti-feminist women lean on feminism to obtain social esteem.

Maybe you should actually see the commercial before you decide what it is telling women?  Just sayin’.

To repost my comment from TPM:

And the very next ad should be:

“When Pam Tebow was pregnant, she had access to proper medical care and, in consultation with her Ob/Gyn and her family, she was able to make her own medical decision regarding her pregnancy.

Unfortunately, Pam Tebow and her sponsor Focus on the Family don’t want you to have the same options as Ms. Tebow.

They want to deny you access to safe and effective medical care and have the government make medical decisions for you and force them on you.

Why do Pam Tebow and Focus on the Family love Big Government and why don’t they trust women and their families to run their own lives?”

I have no idea if Tebow is going to be any good in the NFL, but if there is a just god, this coddled sanctimonious motherfucking douchebag is gonna suck total fucking ass.

What’s the over/under on the first time a fan brings a sign to a stadium that says “Abort Tebow!”?

What this teaches us is that abortion is evil, so long as you have around the clock medical care and are lucky enough to defy the odds, not die and not have your baby come out stillborn.

But isn’t that why Xtian conservatives are in the vanguard of the fight for universal healthcare?

Oh, wait…

Maybe you should actually see the commercial before you decide what it is telling women?  Just sayin’.

Fact: it’s a Focus on the Family commercial, so we know that at best it frowns on the choice to have an abortion.

Fact: it’s a story about a woman who took a serious medical risk with her own life, and how that crapshoot paid off with an NFL player.

What message do you think it’s intending to send?

The nerve of those doctors, advising a woman to abort to avoid dying! What part of pro-life don’t they understand.

In fairness, for the kind of money they’re spending, one might be forgiven for thinking the ad would be one of those shocking turnaround spot, where Focus on the Family acknowledged abortion as a legitimate choice—sort of like Domino’s “our old pizza was crap” campaign.

But the expense is easily explained, because the real, underlying message is “Listen to Daddy Dobson’s brand new talk radio show!” I can guarantee you that, if Dobson and his co-host son (a guy who loves family so much he divorced and re-married) didn’t have this radio show coming up, Focus on the Fascism wouldn’t be shelling out for this ad.

Even without the round the clock medical care, how many women could actually manage two months of bedrest? God forbid you have other kids to worry about, or have to work, or have a less than supportive spouse.

Of course, if you’re not extremely well off with excellent health insurance, you shouldn’t try to have kids. Or fuck, for that matter.

Oh man, she gave birth to a future football player?

Wow, that is so impressive!

Good thing she didn’t get the abortion—I don’t know how the rest of the world would have gotten on without yet another of those self-important jerks who grow up having their butts continually kissed for pretty much their entire developing years, until they blow a knee or something, find they have no resources besides throwing a ball around and spend the next few decades limping around while arthritis settles around their banged-up bones, and talking less and less coherently about their glory days until it becomes apparent that they’d sustained major brain damage during said glory period.

Wasn’t there a Hothead Paisan comic that went like this? Only the son was a basketball player?

“I get an “A” in womanhood because of my son! Sonny sonny son boy son!”

Paraphrased from memory.

Thank you, AngelScarlett. I’m on my second high-risk pregnancy, and while I’ve been lucky enough to never have to make this choice, I’ve been close enough to it to have the discussion with my husband. And in my husband’s mind? No question. If my life is threatened, then I should have an abortion. Because my husband, you know, likes me.

Fact: it’s a story about a woman who took a serious medical risk with her own life, and how that crapshoot paid off with an NFL player.

“What about the 8 other potential babies ABORTED by having this football player?  One of them might have cured cancer?  What about them, huh?”

Is anyone else just the slightest bit leery of a story told 20 years later, by someone with a huge axe to grind, about a diagnosis made in the back of beyond, and hosts of doctors recommending abortion in a country where abortion was (and still apparently is) unlawful?

In order to be “pro-life” heroes, they need choice.  Without it, they get no praise and no respect.  They need us to get this treatment.

And they know it too, which is why they can show up on the cover of “In Touch” magazine talking about how they’re glad they chose life. And everyone who supports them won’t even blink an eye at it, while the rest of us roll ours.

I have no idea if Tebow is going to be any good in the NFL, but if there is a just god, this coddled sanctimonious motherfucking douchebag is gonna suck total fucking ass.

I can’t wait to see the shitstorm which erupts when he tries to put something on his eyeblack in training camp and the NFL slaps him down for it. Because they have to, you know. Otherwise Ochocinco will be updating his eyeblack after every catch.

Only tangentially related to the godbaggery, the first time I ever saw this guy, it was about how touched everyone was that he was wearing a wristband in memory of a promising young high school football player who died tragically before he could fulfill his dream of playing for the Florida Gators.  Everyone was teary and thankful to God and so thrilled that Tim himself came to give some honor in the kid’s name, and what was completely glossed over was that the kid died in a football related injury.  It left kind of a bad taste in my mouth.

Incertus, now that Tim ‘Jesus’ Tebow is gone, I expect the NCAA to come down hard on that kind of thing, too.  It’s really gotten out of control.

yet another reason Toby Gearhart shouldl have won the Heisman.

who make a different calculation and don’t want to run the risk of being the dead mother of a dead baby.

What about her four other children?

Who took care of them while she was on total bedrest in a hospital for 4 months?  If she had died, who would be their mother, then?

They’d never be the same.  They might recover with enough other support and therapy, but even with the best of both, losing a parent is an absolute disaster to the psyche of a kid.  Been there, done that.

But those kids were already here, so who the fuck cares about them?  FetusFootballJesus was in utero, and that’s where all the concern should go.

Wow, fail all over the place!

To point out one: she not only had a choice, she had a choice in circumstances such that without that right to choose she might have been forced in the opposite direction.

Right now, there is a huge prioritization, in many circles, of fetal life. This prioritization was created FOR the abortion debate. And there is no guarantee that THAT will remain, should they win their fight here: what an embattled, threatened community will cherish and defend, a coddled and complacent population will take for granted—-we saw this to some extent with the generation of women who grew up before Roe v Wade and the generation that grew up after. The fervor of the moment gets lost, between generations, and this could easily happen to the “omg precious baybeee” line of thought. And then . . .

And then—-whatever rules we would have regarding who chooses what to do with a pregnancy in place of women—-doctor chooses, government chooses—-are going to be making those decisions, and the pro-lifers will be revealed to have put themselves in the same boat the rest of us are in, in that the choice is not guaranteed to be made in line with their priorities.

Government has no lasting morality from date to date, term to term, year to year. It is dependent on the people who elect it, and what the fifth or eighty-fifth Congress can hold near-sacred, the sixth or the seventeenth or the one-hundred-seventy-seventh can ask “what the fuck were they thinking?” about, and undo. And they might not undo all of it, they might just undo the parts the original lawmakers found to be the big important detail. Like saving the babies, rather than the technicality of who gets to choose.

And then the next Pam Tebow, pregnant and with a placental abruption in the year 2027 after abortion was outlawed in 2015 and then restored to highly-regulated doctor control in 2022, could very well be forcefully committed to a hospital under a judge’s order at her doctor’s request, just like that other woman recently was forced into bed rest and denied a second opinion or transfer due to it being in her fetus’s “best interest” to override her autonomy and rights—-just like that, any baby-adoring woman with a wanted pregnancy going potentially-or-probably-but-not-undoubtedly wrong and dangerous, could be forced into an abortion in her “best interest.”

Because we interfere with people’s lives and override their priorities all the time, when there’s enough belief that it’s justified, enough assurance that someone couldn’t be making those choices in their right mind.

Without the “Fight For Life!”-fueled fetus worship insisting that every zygote, embryo, fetus, and even dead fetus is more important than the woman around it, how likely is a doctor, trained and legally obliged to protect their patients from themself, if necessary—-how likely is a doctor going to be to indulge some patient’s silly whim to argue with the doctor’s and the state’s analysis that she should have a sensible abortion in order to carelessly risk dying to protect a probably-dead baby?

The damage the antis could do here will long outlast the way that damage is currently directed. There is nothing to prevent it from turning around and coming down on what they empowered it to save.

It’s easy, so easy, to piss into the air with the wind at your back and your enemies in front—-but wind changes.

My prediction: this ad won’t actually air.  I know I’m not really going out on a limb here, but I really doubt that FOTF actually wants this thing to be broadcast during the Super Bowl.

Suppose it does air: FOTF pays millions (which is doesn’t have) to air a 30 second ad which injects both politics and religion into a sporting event.  Few minds are changed.  Possibly even some negative backlash.

More likely scenario: this ad generates tons of fake “controversy” in the press. CBS, wanting no part of any of this, backs down and decides not to air it. FOTF goes apeshit, whining about how they are persecuted for their sacred beliefs by godless liberals.  They generate 100 times more press then their 30 second spot ever would, plus they get to keep the millions which it would have cost to air it.

But that aside, good for Tim Tebow, since this is the closest he’ll ever come to participating in a Super Bowl.

Incertus, now that Tim ‘Jesus’ Tebow is gone, I expect the NCAA to come down hard on that kind of thing, too.  It’s really gotten out of control.

The NCAA, for all its bluster as the ruling body, doesn’t really have the kind of stroke that the conferences do to handle this sort of thing, and the conferences are ruled by the big schools in them, which is my roundabout way of saying that if someone else at Florida wants to do it, he’ll do it, and if a Muslim at, say, East Podunk U wants to quote a Surah, he won’t be able to, or if an atheist anywhere wants to put “Fear Me, Not God” on his (which would be awesome beyond all belief), he’ll never see the field because the school won’t be willing to piss off any rich boosters. And those rich boosters who would pull their funding if a Muslim or atheist even existed on their team (because they own those teams, no doubt) would also pull it if someone interfered with the star quarterback praising Jesus on national television.

Even if Tebow is a perfectly nice fellow, not stupid, not ill-informed, not an asshole, he’s still a healthy man at the horniest stage of his life, whose guidance in these matters has been largely restricted to whatever his God-bothering, homeschooling parents think isn’t too smutty for a pure, unmarried boy to know.

In other words, The Player Most Likely to Unintentionally Knock Someone Up.

Here’s hoping that she, at least, has the sense to get an abortion.

I don’t follow college football much outside the ACC (I went to Boston College), and just barely even that. So all I’ve ever heard of Tim Tebow is as a punchline. I could not care less about his mother’s story.

I thought the NFL didn’t allow advocacy commercials like this to air during the Super Bowl?  I remember a few years ago, some liberal group was going to pay money to put up an ad, but they didn’t allow it.

Whenever I hear the anti-choice argument of “they could become a great NFL player” or “they could find the cure for cancer” or bla bla bla, I turn it around and say, “what if they abort the next Hitler, Mao, or Stalin?”  Abortion has just saved millions of lives!  But seriously, what you do in life rests on how you were raised and how you manage your life, not if you were born or not.  Hitler could have been an artist if he would have been allowed to go to school in Vienna.

I actually want Tim Tebow to have a long NFL stint.  Because the longer he’s in the league, the longer the delay before he launches the inevitable political career.  As long as he’s a football player, his annoyingness can be contained.  Think of the how many people “Senator Tebow” could harm.

But in defense of Tebow and as a Gator fan, I think he’s a great player and I wish him luck in the NFL.  I just wish he would STFU on the matter of religion.

@ Kyra#28 - That was excellent.  Only one change - winds change, IMO. 

But why isn’t Hollywood or independent filmmakers making just such sci-fi movies?  We need the emotional shit out there just like Juno and Bella and whatever other crap the anti choice brigade is putting out.

The NCAA, for all its bluster as the ruling body, doesn’t really have the kind of stroke that the conferences do to handle this sort of thing

The NCAA doesn’t even have much power to dictate how Div.I football championships are determined.

The BCS is an entirely seperate entity from the NCAA, and yet it is the BCS that decides what team shall call itself “National Champions” (there is no such thing as an NCAA National Champion in football).

Tebow’s a douche.

I hope his entrance into the NFL serves the purpose of making people say, “Gosh, even Ryan Leaf wasn’t this overrated.”

I thought the NFL didn’t allow advocacy commercials like this to air during the Super Bowl?  I remember a few years ago, some liberal group was going to pay money to put up an ad, but they didn’t allow it.

Actually, it was CBS, not the NFL that wouldn’t allow the UCC to run a commercial stating that Jesus wouldn’t keep LGBT people out of the church.  That was in 2005.

And this time, it’s CBS again making the decision to allow the Focus on the Family ad to run.  The Super Bowl rotates around all of the networks sporadically - last year it was on NBC, this year CBS, next year FOX.

DTG in STL...

Ryan Leaf was not just a little overrated.  He managed to make himself hated in his hometown before even his success in college!

FlipYrWhig, so you think Tebow is going to become Heath Schuler?  I don’t know that a long NFL career would necessarily delay his entry to politics, but it would probably make him a more potent one.  In any event, while he is a talented player, he is a pretty long way away from being an NFL level player so coaches would have to do some intensive work to make him an NFL QB.

Christ on a crutch, the same sort of “What if you prevented the birth of Einstein, Jesus,” what or who have you, guilt trip was circulating in the early 1960s—but concerning the use of the birth control pill!

(And a similar trope earlier, much more virulent—concerning the use of the diaphram in the 1920s.)

Yeah, you can always rely on slut-shaming, and forced birthers trying to force complete strangers to give birth willy nilly—different decades, different century, but still and always sticking their nose in your hoo ha.

ACTION: Tell CBS: Reject the Focus on the Family ad or accept the UCC’s!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/1/18/826600/-Tell-CBS:-Reject-the-Focus-on-the-Family-ad-or-accept-the-UCCs!

This “what if the child that would have been born is a genius” schtick is so patently ridiculously, I’m surprised people with half a brain give it more than two seconds thought before tossing it out of the window.

How about the fact that lots of children born prevent other children being born, hmm?  My mother miscarried her first pregnancy - if that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have existed!  This Tebow chap not being aborted meant that another imaginary baby that his mother might have got pregnant with a few months later wasn’t born!  And that child might have been a better American football player!

Won’t somebody think of the imaginary children?!?!

If your case against abortion is that your future child could be a one in a several hundred million talent, you need a better case.

YES.

Florida grad here (class of ‘81).  This special brand of fundie behavior did not exist—certainly not this pervasively or with this sort of visibility—when I was at UF, though football culture was the be-all and end-all then, as it is now.  You don’t even want to know about the special treatment the Gators got from professors, coaches, everyone: Can’t make it to class except for the midterm and final?  No worries, you’ll get an A or B anyway!  Can’t seem to come up with a term paper?  Here, copy this one over in your own handwriting and put your name at the top.  Are you a starting-lineup star with offers from six other major universities despite your D average in high school?  Well, how’s about we have this wealthy alum set you up with a condo and a sports car, and oh, this lovely young lady we brought with us to Holeinthewall High for our recruitment meeting?  She’ll be only too happy to show you around town if you go with us…

At Florida, if you’re a football player, you’re only a tiny rung lower than God himself, so it’s not surprising that the worshipping forced-birthers would make this kind of connection: OMG, people, if Mrs. Tebow could have kept Tebow from us, how many other Runningback Redeemers will we never even know or get to bet on thanks to those evil babykilling mothers?

Does anyone else here suspect that Mrs. Tebow might have originally felt otherwise, given that she had four other children to worry about leaving motherless?

Oh, and Willie Geist (MSNBC) just gushed about this on Joe Scar.  No objective analysis of the ad’s rubbish logic or anything, just more football adulation along the lines of, She was told to have an abortion but wow, THAT baby turned out to be Tim Tebow…”.  Appalling.

<quote>Who cares about Alabama, lets watch Tim Tebow cry! </quote>

And, like all public displays of tears, Tebow’s are undoubtably intended to manipulate. It’s sci-ence!!

Five kids and only one headed to the NFL?  Olivia Manning is not impressed.

Unrelated, but is anybody else just absolutely heartbroken about the possibility that the Lion of the Senate is very likely going to have his seat filled today by a vapid teabagging douche?

One month ago… “Come on, it’s Massachusetts, they would NEVER elect a Republican to the Senate.”

Those words now make me want to eat glass.  I really hope all of the polls turn out to be wrong.  Coakley isn’t leading in a single poll anymore… even the Daily Kos/R2K poll now has her tied with Brown.  Every other poll has Brown up by 5-10 points.  Nobody thinks we’re going to win this race today.  I hope they’re wrong.

How the fuck did this happen?

Why is it that so many football players are right wing religious nuts?  Or is that just my impression becuase of a few high-profile cases like Staubach?

DTG, I’m upset about it yes, heartbroken?  Not really.  The stupidity of both the american voter and the democratic party stopped amazing me long ago.  I dismissed early polls on this and the constant jibber jabbing of the morons in the punditry, because I have seen this before.  “OH McCain may very well win Jersey and PA” being one of many astoundingly stupid examples.

This one did catch me off guard.  One of the things playing into this that the jabbering nitwits in the punditry don’t talk about, might be that MA already HAS this health care plan.  So here’s something interesting; the only thing this would do for them is force some of them to pay to deliver the same health care they are already paying higher taxes for, to poor redstates.  Now, I don’t live there so I don’t know how much attention that has gotten in their local press.  But I"d be surprised if it hasn’t been talked about.

Then you have the fact that the Rahm takeover of the Dem party is complete.  A Howard Dean would have looked at MA and said, we can get a real liberal in there.  Rahm looked at it and phoned up his buddy Bill C and they both popped boners over the idea of getting another middle of the road non-entity in their pockets.  So we got Coakley, who as far as I can tell, simply is not a good campaigner.

Then you have the fact that the head of the D party, Mr. Barack Obama, has decided to allow the Republican party to co-opt the populist anger in this country, as if they were on the side of the little guys.  While this is a laughable idea, did I mention that American voters are stupid?  And they are swallowing it, and Obama is allowing it, because he did not want to, I believe, fight anything that could be deemed a class war by the jibbering nitwits in the punditry and get David Gregory all upset.

And still and all?  The voters of MA getting ready to hand the keys over to the same drunks who drove us off the cliff, as if the answer to that problem had not been drunken driving, but rather, that the drivers weren’t drunk enough?  Pretty fucking stunning.

Oh, did Imention that american voters are stupid?

Five kids and only one headed to the NFL?  Olivia Manning is not impressed.

LOL. Neither is Cathy Clausen.

OK, granted, Peyton and Eli have panned out a bit more than Casey. We’ll have to see about Jimmy, but he’s a better pro-style QB than Tebow is.

AnglScarlett @ #49:

I think if we lose Ted Kennedy’s seat today, the loss can be summed up in one simple word: HUBRIS.  From what I understand, the moment Coakley won the Democratic primary, she delivered a speech that made it sound as if she had already won the general election, and then put her entire campaign on snooze, figuring that Brown would be a non-entity and that her election to the seat was then an inevitability.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  This is what happens when Democrats drink too much of their own fucking Kool-Aid and assume that the rainbows and ponies of 2006 and 2008 would continue forever.

I want her to eke out the victory, but my God, the fact that her victory is even in question, the fact that we’re not running away with this one, shows just how far off the rails the Democratic Party is running.

If we lose this one, I have absolutely no reason to feel particularly hopeful about our chances this November.  This was supposed to be an easy victory for us, and had Coakley actually bothered running for the seat beyond the primary, we probably wouldn’t even be here today.  If we can’t get this right, I have a hard time believing we’re gonna pick up seats in far less liberal states like Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky, and Florida in November.

The mailings and ads put up by Coakley and the state Democtratic Party have been horrible and may have turned many against her.  I had 5 political fliers in my mail last Friday.  1-vote for me, SB. 3-SB is the next Bush, MA DC. 1-SB is bad, I’m better, vote for me; MC.  Every one of them had SB’s name. Someone tell the Democtrats this advertizing is worse than none.  Please.  Before they screw the midterms completely.

I have to say the whole “don’t abort and you too can give birth to an over-rated, whining, privileged douche” argument is quite compelling, but I do kind of like my wife so I’m really torn now. I can see how this ad will be really effective at changing minds.

Snowflake @29: Minds aren’t changed on choice per se, but these sort of things reinforce the idea that women who have abortions deserve to be treated like no good sluts, and it makes it easier to write increasingly punitive laws to punish their slutty slutness.

Here is the link to the case of Florida (hmmm) woman currently suing her hospital for forcing her to stay on bed rest—so basically, she was imprisoned, denied a second opinion, and forced to submit to unwanted medical treatment (bed rest, c/section, likely some drugs as well)—the *fetus* had a lawyer, she didn’t.

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/01/15/can-state-turn-you-into-incubator

The fetus was found to be dead after her forced bedrest and surgery, as well, not surprising because to add insult to injury, bedrest as a way of preventing premature birth or other problems is not actually considered all that effective. Regardless, she was deprived of her rights as an autonomous human being by the hospital.

Outrageous, and happening already.

DTG,

In fairness to CBS & the NFL, they haven’t officially accepted the ad yet.  It’s assumed they will because FOTF paid for it.  The NFL HATES this kind of controversy.  That’s why you get ultra-bland halftime shows and bans on political commercials.  In a strange way, that’s why Janet Jackson ended up flashing her nipple: the NFL cut Beyonce & Bono from playing halftime at Super Bowl XXXVIII because they wanted to do their AIDS in Africa charity song.  The NFL said they couldn’t do a “message” song for some charity.  Beyonce got to sing the National Anthem instead.

I’d bet this ad doesn’t make it to broadcast.  On the other hand, NFL Commissioner Goodell is a staunch Republican, and CBS isn’t exactly know for making smart decisions, so I could be wrong.  But there is a solid track record here that the NFL will tell CBS to give back the money and bag the ad.

Does anyone else here suspect that Mrs. Tebow might have originally felt otherwise, given that she had four other children to worry about leaving motherless?

C’mon!  They’re making this commercial because she’s the bestestestest motherer ever!  She would NEVER choose abortion, and if she died, that would just PROVE she was the bestestest motherer since she GAVE HER LIFE for her unborn child!

The other four were already born, so, not so special anymore.

Why’d you have to go and bring up anything other than Miracle Fetus Football Jesus?  He’s the only important part of the story.  His mom’s just a womb, a womb that was properly servile and happy to risk itself for Football.

Seriously, this is exactly why choice is important: real women have lives that are complicated.  No one elses can do the math of deciding how much of a risk she is able or willing to take.  Another woman made a different decision and safely remained living for her existing children and has no regrets.  Another woman made the same decision as Mrs. Tebow and ended up with a dead fetus.  Or dead herself.

The pro-gestationists LOVE the Tebow story, b/c despite the fact that this was a dangerous pregnancy, both the baby and the mother survived without harm.  They like to claim that ALL dangerous pregnancies would have this same miraculous outcome if sluts would just try to carry them to term.  Bill O’Reilly has even said as much on his program—that pregnancy never threatens the life of a woman.

The Tebows were lucky.  They like to think the Sky Fairy fated this outcome, but they were lucky.  Forcing every woman with placental abruption to continue the pregnancy will kill more women than produce Football Jesuses.  It’s no joke.

I’m a football fan, and I think that home-schooled kids should have the opportunity to compete in varsity sports along with their friends in public schools, if they can keep up.

happyfungirl - I’m not a football fan (and God-bothering players tend to confirm my tastes) but even if you thought home-schooling was a form of child abuse—hell, especially if you thought home-schooling was a form of child abuse—why would anyone object to, among other things,  intentionally sheltered kids getting a chance to be around normal kids their own age? It’s win-win all around. I’m stunned that people actually had to go to court over this.

That’s why you get ultra-bland halftime shows and bans on political commercials.

Not completely true… the Obama ‘08 Campaign made history in 2008 by becoming the first presidential campaign to ever run advertising during Super Bowl XLII.  It was a big deal not only because it broke the trend of not airing political ads, but because the Obama Campign had so much freaking money that they could afford to drop a few million dollars to buy the most expesnive airtime in all of television.

Molly,

The issue has never been participation, it’s been grades.  No-Pass, No-Play has become such a staple of HS extracurricular activities in the last 30 years that people forget that there was actually some thought to “home-schooling” to get around it.  If you don’t have “grades” to worry about, then anyone is eligible to play.  The objections to home-schooled kids playing varsity sports, or band, or choir, or cheerleading, or whatever, has usually been based on the idea that some enterprising family will have their hotshot athlete kid stay home and still be eligible to play.

Being out of school for so long, I’m not sure how it’s handled now, but the home-schooled kids do get some opportunities to play now.

@Anglscarlett- My guess about the seemingly high numbers of scarily fundie football players is looking at the areas of the country where football is second only to god (and you better have the Super Bowl on during church).  The deep south, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, etc seem to have the biggest emphasis on the young kids and high school sports programs, raising them up from the time they can walk. This is speculation of course, being up here in the Northwest where HS sports are a past-time for most, not the be-all end-all of the educational experience.

Andddd since we import our professional players from all over the country we end up with our one single Hall of Fame player for the Seahawks being Steve Largent, now the uber-conservative politician in Oklahoma. Sigh.

“We were grieved,” she said. “And so my husband just prayed that if the Lord would give us a son, that he would let us raise him.”

This sentence makes very little sense. It sounds like “Dear God, please give me a sports car. And if you do, promise to let me drive it.” Is he complaining that God gave them a pregnancy only to possibly snatch it away? If so, that displays a deeper level of thinking than normally seen in godbotherers.

Aside from the many ways this ad ignores the reality of abortion, women’s lives, and access to health care, it also hilights a massive problem with the christian underpinnings of anti-choice belief. If God is truly all powerful and has a plan for everything, then what is the point of prayer? Do they honestly think they can change God’s mind. That God doesn’t know just how much they want a child? That God just likes to hear people begging for things?

Look, if you honestly think God’s in control, then your only honest reaction to a situation like Pam Tebow’s is one of zen-like fatalism. Not belief that God will heal you if you pray hard enough, but absolute, unemotional acceptance of any possible outcome. And that includes other people having abortions. After all, it wouldn’t happen if God didn’t want it to.

Bouj:

In most states, home-schoolign is considered a form of private shool.  Smaller accredited private non-homeschooled kids (whose schools may be too small to support a team) also don’t get to play on the publicly funded fields and equipment either.  It’s the IHSAA that governs this crap and they could easily change the rule - as academic programs have to make an alternative route to player eligibility - whether that is taking the NCLB state test (a joke for any above average kids) or some other nationally normed test.  It’s unfair, illegal discrimination pure and simple. 

So, for most schools, it isn’t argued sometimes, Molly, it comes across as policy set in stone, though kids in some states have successfully (in court) challenged it. And not only sports, but music, art and theater if they are considered extracurriculars.

By “if they can keep up” I assume you mean if they make the tryout cut?  Otherwise, you seem to imply some sort of lack in homeschoolers which is coming across as ignorant and demeaning.  In a few sports, the parellel to school sports “club teams” are open to any kid with the cash and frequently home to quite a few homeschoolers, are considered far better and more demanding than the high school program - volleyball and hockey to name a two.

“We were grieved,” she said. “And so my husband just prayed that if the Lord would give us a son, that he would let us raise him.”

What if the lord had given them a daughter?

“We were grieved,” she said. “And so my husband just prayed that if the Lord would give us a son, that he would let us raise him.”

This sentence makes very little sense.

It’s just an odd way of putting it, and it presumes an outlook that fetus=baby.  So they ‘had a son’ (conceived a male fetus), they got the news that complications would probably result in a stillbirth, and then they prayed for the live birth of a viable infant.

“yet another reason Toby Gearhart shouldl have won the Heisman.”

Is ‘Toby Gearhart’ some strange way you translated Ndamukong Suh into English?

“I also can’t believe that anyone could argue to exclude any kid who wants to engage in sports or any other healthy activity. But they do sometimes.”

I would guess the (usually) unstated reason, at least in Michigan, is that the public schools are funded per pupil. So, it’s in their interest to encourage people to send their kids and one of the ways to encourage that, hypothetically, would be sports. I’ve heard that said out loud by a school board member as an argument against allowing the local tiny Christian schools’ students to play sports at a public high school, though the board eventually didn’t follow that, and voted to let the Catholic and Baptist school kids play.

To emhajbee@ #55: regarding the forced bedrest/forced/c-section and incarceration of Samantha Burton, huffpo has an excellent post linking to Sarah Plain’s last pregnancy.  This needs to be hit hard, hard, hard.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lynn-m-paltrow/open-letter-to-governor-s_b_124393.html

I am kind of taken back (besides being disgusted that they would even run this, I wonder if they would run a real feminist choice ad during the Super Bowl?)

BAHHAHHAAAAA! That’s a good one AngelScarlett!! Remember that hideous Life: What a Beautiful Choice ad that ran in the late 80’s? (George Page? was the narrarator. I couldn’t stand hearing his voice after viewing that ad) There was a Prochoice commercial called Old Guys that had a woman being followed around and having these old men controlling her day to day decisions. It aired on ONE station. *The War on Choice Gloria Feldt.

phylosopher,

I see.  I just remember when I was in HS, the home-schoolers were kept out over the whole idea that the kids who can’t get the grades would just pull-out of class and become home-schooled to avoid No-Pass, No-Play.  I don’t see that as much of a problem anymore now that HS kids with the talent to play college ball and the aspirations to go pro are already playing club sports (AAU, American Legion baseball, Jr. Tennis, club soccer, etc) year-round anyway.  The kids that are really serious about playing college sports aren’t relying on HS sports to showcase themselves.  It’s just another team they play on.  Well, except in the instance of HS football.  There isn’t a real club alternative to HS football.

I read a piece this last year about high schools who were at the mercy of top sports talent who really didn’t care about the HS, since it was just another team they played on.  The focus was some Chicago high school basketball star, but the story is the same in TX, NJ, VA, CA, and anywhere else sports supersedes education.

DTG - re health care thought
As I was driving from work to the polls and then home (3:45 -5) I heard the same commercial from the Independent Women’s Committee (I think it was committee) saying vote for SB; he’ll vote against MA citizens having to pay taxes for Nebraskas medicare. 
Fail on so many levels.  Same commercial. Three times on 3 different channels.  But I hadn’t heard it once prior to today.

Christianity seems to be taking over sports, I give it five years before the NFL is more like All Star wrestling than a real sport.  Thank you Jesus

Holy shit, phylosopher.

The first commenter follows up with this gem:

the Left has its share of obstinent folk, who want to hold the Dem Party hostage to an untenable philosophical position that the woman reigns supreme

as in after a woman has sex and becomes pregnant, she no longer gets to decide the right course of action.  The state absolutely has a right and duty to step in.  More than that, this asshole claims that this is the true LIBERAL position.

A woman reigning supreme over her own body is an untenable position.  Can the misogyny ever be more plain?

The problem Bouj is that the alternate routes are really, really expensive - between airfare, hotles AND the thousands to play on travel teams.

My school district is currently offering an almost six figure position for director of athletics, yet the stupid defenders of public school only kids on sports teams will try to tell you that they pay their own way!  Yes, they may pay for travel on a bus - at school discounted/negotiated rates and their own uniforms and lodging.  But the coaches salary is paid by the district, the fields and equipment are housed and maintained by the district, you get the picture…

Having once had to check myself out of a hospital - severe claustrophobia and inattentive nurses - I cannot imagine the hell Samantha Burton went through.  Then to find out it really wasn’t for a potential child, but for a corpse - that stupid, fucking doctor couldn’t use a stethoscope properly or do an ultrasound to get no fetal heartbeat? And at 25 weeks, the chances of the child surviving the c-section or surviving without severe complications are very slim.  Yet these same assholes who forced medical intervention are the same ones who talk about “being open to God’s plan” when they lie about contraception and NFP. 

I want O’Reilly or some other reTHUGlican to ask Bible Spice how she would have reacted to a court order to stay and deliver in Texas?  For that matter, ask the First DUD how he would have reacted to his wife’s incarceration and someone cutting her belly open against her wishes. 

The parallels between Burton and Palin are striking.  Headline:

Sarah Palin Would Not Have Been Allowed TO Board Plane When in Labor in FLorida.
or
Palin Would Have Been Forced to Undergo Involuntary C-Section Had She been in FLorida and not Texas

phylosopher,

They are definitely more expensive, but the kids that are serious about it and have the talent for it aren’t paying for it all.  They are being fronted the money or have parents willing to pay.  The top AAU basketball players aren’t worried about travel expenses because it’s not a problem for them, one way or the other.  People will invest in them on the idea that they will make it back when they go pro.  It’s really shady and horrible and it doesn’t work out most of the time, but it is a reality.

I’m not saying homeschoolers should be excluded at all.  I think they should be allowed to play for public schools if their parents are paying taxes.  My only problem with it is the grades factor.  I’m a staunch defender of No-Pass, No Play.  If someone came up with a way to test the home schoolers (not SAT/ACT, but something more akin to final exams) to prove that they weren’t just some athletic prodigy trying to skirt the system, then everything would be fine.  If homeschoolers are just allowed to play without any grades being considered, then someone will try to cheat the system to avoid going to school at all while playing sports.

I agree with you, Jesse, as usual.  I always enjoy the dark humor and banter, and am hardly ever offended.  The shock value and dry humor at pandagon is what keeps me coming back.

I was offended by a single line in this entry, however, and after being a fan and reader at pandagon for many years I decided to register and respond.  I want to say I agree with everything about this post as well as your main argument.  I also agree with the context of the quote, take out the offensive language and you’re damn right.  When men have to start pushing dead babies through their penises (yes, i said babies) then they’d give a fuck.

Having said that.  I have had a stillbirth.  It was not due to a placental abruption.  The reason was unknown.  I almost bled to death afterwards due to a retained placenta, the opposite complication.  From my experience, this ad is disgusting and could put women in danger (not like ‘Focus on the Anus’ cares) and could hurt lots of moms who chose or may have to choose between following medical advice and risking their own lives after an abruption.

I am offended, however, by “pass a lump of dead biological tissue”.  I understand what you’re doing (it’s shocking).  I agree with your overall argument.  I am unabashedly pro-choice.  But a choice many women make is to view their embryo/fetus as their child.  Attachment for a wanted child can begin long before the pregnancy and increases with time and significant events such as a positive pregnancy test, fetal movement, naming, etc.

My son died.  I gave birth to him at 37 weeks.  He was a baby.  He was my son.  It was my choice to view him that way.  I’m not asking for personhood status, or for anyone else to view him that way.  I am asking for you to respect that this is how I view him.  My birth experience, my baby, shouldnt be valueless because he died before I gave birth.  Would you call a grieving person’s deceased mother or grandmother a lump of dead biological tissue? You might think that (bodies are just bodies) but you would respect their grief despite the fact that the body they are all mourning around may merely be dead tissue.  You wouldn’t call their loved one this for shock value, or to make any kind of point, because you would respect their grief.

Since the live birth of my daughter in 2003 and the full term stillbirth of my son in 2007, I have since had an abortion in 2009.  It was my choice then to not view the 7 week old embryo as my child.  I have two children, one lives and one died. I would be offended if someone did refer to that embryo as my ‘child’ or a ‘baby’.  It’s for me to define for me, not anyone else.  Despite my view of that embryo as decidedly not my child, I would not tell another mother that an embryo she carried or miscarried at 7 weeks was not her child or her baby if she defined it that way.  She defines it for her.  Let her view her body and whatever happens to be residing in it how she wants, without belittling her experience, or grief.  I know people who grieve for miscarriage, I don’t understand it but part of me does.  It was a child to them, and that’s not right or wrong.  You should understand this because I know you would forcefully argue against someone else expecting me to feel grief over my abortion, which I feel none even though I still grieve and miss my son every stinkin day.  It works both ways.  You defining a stillborn baby (yes, baby) as a lump of biological tissue is just as offensive as the anti-choicers telling me my aborted embryo was a baby. 

Okay, feel free to argue with me everyone.  Just tread gently as this is obviously a difficult subject.  And Jesse, please tread gently on women who have lost a child this way.  I really am on your side.  My blog demonstrates that throughout if you’re questioning my creds or think i’m trolling.  I’m not.  Just wanted to give you the view of a mother who has had a stillbirth, and whose experience of it strengthened my pro-choice position.  Indeed it made me understand choice in a whole new way. I just wanted to let you know that you don’t have to belittle my grief or my child to make the point you were making.  It wasnt necessary to make your point, and it aligns your rhetoric and logic with anti-choicers who think they can define women’s experiences for them.

So here’s my question: when the medical facts stacked against her said to abort and she didn’t because of her beliefs why was the rest of the advice of the medical world good enough for her for bed rest, medications, and a C-section?  Is there a check and balance of what advice from the medical world is acceptable to her and what is not?  Why didn’t she simply rely on prayer to save her child.  If God wanted him to live, shouldn’t she believe that ultimately that was God’s choice and shouldn’t be aided by those nasty remedy wielding doctors who bring things like anesthesia, emergency surgeries, and knowledge to the table?  Oh, wait, I guess God blessed them with those things…unlike those other doctors who advised abortion…yeah, there must be a list of the “good” and “bad” doctors out there.  I wonder if it’s as easy as looking up the ones in my insurance network.
I guess she should have looked “in network” first.

They are definitely more expensive, but the kids that are serious about it and have the talent for it aren’t paying for it all.  They are being fronted the money or have parents willing to pay.

Tell me where bouj - not in my kids sport (hockey).  ANd of course I didn’t mean the kids breaking his piggybank open - of course it’s the parents - and not just being willing but ABLE to pay, ya know?