By J. DeVoy
The big story in my own little slice of hell law school yesterday — other than some ill-planned “joke” by tasteless imbeciles to bring Jersey Shore cast members to commencement — was CBS’s tentative decision to run a pro-life commercial during the Super Bowl. The ad, sponsored by openly Christian group Focus on the Family, features Heisman Trophy-winner Timothy Tebow and his parents, discussing their decision not to abort the child who became the most dominant quarterback in the SEC. (Source.)
But, enter the censorshipistas who think this message undermines abortion rights.
The Women’s Media Center and over 30 other liberal and women’s advocacy groups sent a letter to CBS, the TV network to air the Super Bowl on Feb. 7, saying: “… we urge you to immediately cancel this ad and refuse any other advertisement promoting Focus on the Family’s agenda.”
“We are calling on CBS to stick to their policy of not airing controversial advocacy ads … and this is clearly a controversial ad,” Jehmu Greene, the president of the Women’s Media Center, told Reuters.
How about no? Instead of offering a rebuttal message or rationale for how this personal vignette, the contents of which are yet unknown, harms abortion rights, they immediately reach for the bottomless slopbucket of shame.
If I were at the helm of CBS, my response would be exactly one finger long. One extended, defiant finger. Though not bound by law to do anything, CBS could heed the tenor of public debate shown in Citizens United, namely that money talks, no matter whose it is. And what kind of mush-minds are going to alter their world views based on a 30-second spot featuring the parents of a college athlete?
If people want to counter this message, they shouldn’t stamp their feet and wail like toddlers, but show how much support they have by raising the 2.6-3.2 million dollars necessary to run a counter ad. For how much the pro-choice elite like to trumpet their material success and superior intellects, surely coming up with that sum of money across 30 groups would be a trifling matter. The notion that speech should be fought with speech isn’t suspended merely because it carries a price tag.
It’s doubtful that pro-choice advocates think the act of abortion is a trivial matter. Sure, they’re scientifically accurate that a fetus is a clump of cells, and I admire the hardcore proponents’ desire to argue ad nauseam about when life truly begins in how-many-angels-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin fashion, but there seems to be consensus that abortion is a serious choice with drastic physical and emotional implications. Even then, not all pro-choicers are pro-abortion, recognizing the seriousness of the procedure and wanting to retain only the right for women to make the choice on their own — exactly what the term denotes. (Curiously, none of them support the right for men to make a similar decision and unilaterally truncate their economic liability for unwanted children.) Finally, only the most deluded of dumb shits think that Roe v. Wade will be overturned wholesale or even substantially; abortion is a reality we all live with, and those who seek to end it should consider the burden its cessation would place on our existing social welfare and criminal justice systems.
