Focus on the Family Buys Super Bowl Pregame Ads

February 5, 2010 — Focus on the Family plans to air a second television advertisement four times during the Super Bowl pregame show that will also feature former University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam Tebow, USA Today reports (Horovitz, USA Today, 2/5).

The organization is sponsoring a yet-to-be-seen in-game commercial featuring the Tebows discussing Pam's personal story of contracting amoebic dysentery while pregnant with Tim and ignoring doctors' recommendations to have an abortion (Women's Health Policy Report, 2/1). According to Focus on the Family CEO Jim Daly, the original advertisement was rejected after CBS executives said that Pam Tebow's line, "Both of our lives were at risk," was "too much" (USA Today, 2/5).

Opposition Continues

The Tebow spot has "been the subject of one of the most intense tugs-of-war over an ad in many years," with abortion-rights supporters and opponents both up in arms, the New York Times reports. In response to the Tebow ad, Planned Parenthood Federation of America released its own online ad featuring Olympic gold medalist Al Joyner and former NFL player Sean James supporting a woman's right to make her own "decision about her health and her family" (Elliott, New York Times, 2/5).

The New York-based Women's Media Center -- which is leading a coalition of abortion-rights organizations -- has called on CBS to pull the ad. On Wednesday, Women's Media Center urged supporters to call NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. According to Women's Media Center President Jehmu Greene, the ad "has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year -- an event meant to bring people together" (Kadaba, Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/5).

Editorials, Opinion Pieces Comment on Ad

~ Los Angeles Times: Women's Media Center's call for CBS to cancel the Tebow ad is "a shame, and CBS is to be congratulated for standing up to the pressure," a Los Angeles Times editorial states. "We're solidly for abortion rights, but the campaign against the ad is a misguided attempt at censorship," according to the editorial. It adds that CBS' recent reconsideration of its policy on advocacy ads is "a sensible move," as long as "the network applies this policy fairly to groups across the political spectrum" (Los Angeles Times, 2/5).

~ Katha Pollitt, The Nation: "[P]art of me was thrilled to learn that Focus on the Family was paying" $2.5 million on a thirty-second Super Bowl ad because "[e]very dollar [the group] spends messaging the fans is a dollar not available to pay the electricity bill or keep staff on payroll," Pollitt, an author, writes in an opinion piece. She says it is "maddening that the people who want to take away women's right to choose have annexed 'choice' to their own cause," noting that if the law required women to continue troubled pregnancies "there would be no heroism in doing so." Pollitt continues, "In retrospect it was probably a mistake for pro-choice and feminist organizations to demand that CBS cancel the ad." However, the "trouble is, much of the abortion-rights case is about averting damage, and it's harder to tell those stories," she says (Pollitt, The Nation, 2/4).

~ Lisa Miller, Newsweek: The controversy over the Tebow ad is "a case in point" of how "Americans like values, but they don't know which values they like best," Newsweek religion editor Miller writes in an opinion piece. She also questions how abortion-related ads are different from product ads, saying, "What's the difference … between 'selling' an ideology on TV and selling a hamburger?" According to Miller, "In a working democracy, with a capitalist economy and protected free speech, there is none." She writes, "Isn't promoting one idea over another the foundation of free debate -- and, more crassly, the business of advertising?" (Miller, Newsweek, 2/4).