Pro-Choice and the Superbowl Ad

This year's Superbowl will include an ad concerning abortion. The ad has not been shown yet but here is a description of it:

The ad shows Tebow and his mother Pam discussing her decision not to end a difficult pregnancy in 1987. Pam carried the baby to term against her doctors' recommendations, and her child grew up to be the Heisman-trophy winning University of Florida quarterback, who many consider the best college football player in a generation.

Predictably, the women's movement is outraged. Here's an example from the Huffington Post:

The Women's Media Center and a coalition of organizations dedicated to reproductive rights, tolerance, and social justice is calling on CBS and the NFL to pull Focus on the Family's anti-choice propaganda ad. We do not have to see the ad to know Focus on the Family's real agenda. While pretending its message is a "celebration of life," their true intent is to have the government intrude in women's reproductive health decisions. The subliminal messaging of the ad is also a thinly veiled effort to shame the one in three American women who have an abortion and a dangerous suggestion that choosing to carry a pregnancy to term -- regardless of the risks -- is the right decision for all women.

From the description, the ad is designed to sway a woman who is considering an abortion to have the baby. It says nothing about outlawing abortion. It simply advocates a choice. That's not how the women's groups see it. To them, any message that is not in favor of an abortion must be anti-choice.

Focus on the Family's ad is surrealistic in its argument that a woman who chooses not to have a child may be depriving the Super Bowl of a football player. It uses one family's story to dictate morality to the American public, and encourages young women to disregard medical advice, putting their lives at risk.

In general, I am pro-choice but that means that the choice can go either way. I find it surrealistic that anything that does not urge a woman to have an abortion is anti-choice.

This aspect of the women's movement has bothered me for decades. They call themselves "pro-choice" but, to them, the choice is always to have an abortion. They do not want a choice, they want an abortion. The term "pro-choice" is for public relations, only. Their real agenda is pro-abortion. They see children as nothing more than a drag on a woman's career. Usually this aspect of the movement is well-disguised but every now and then it shows itself in all its ugliness.

Focus on the Family's ad goes against the approximately 70% majority American view that reproductive decisions should be left up to a woman and her physician; against the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that such decisions are protected by a constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy;...

There is nothing in the ad that conflicts with this. The choice still remains with the woman. The ad is nothing but a reminder that the alternative to an abortion is a living human being who can go on to make his mother proud.

Update: The actual ad is so innocuous that you can blink and miss its message. All of the fuss in advance probably did far more to advance its message than the actual ad.