Revolution #191, February 7, 2010
Anti-Woman, Anti-Abortion Super Bowl Ad
Letter from a reader:
In his new talk, “Unresolved Contradictions, Driving Forces for Revolution,” Bob Avakian states that “The question of the status—the oppression and the struggle for the liberation—of women is objectively coming to the forefront in today’s world and posing itself ever more profoundly and acutely.” We can see this in the controversy that is swirling around the Super Bowl anti-abortion ad that is being funded to the tune of $2.5 million by the Christian Fascist group Focus on the Family with University of Florida football All-American and 2008 Heisman Trophy winner, Tim Tebow.
Tebow has become the poster boy for the Christian Fascists and is arguably the most well-known college athlete in the past several decades. As much as he is known for his exploits on the playing field, he is also known for inscribing Bible verses on the eye black he wears for the games. In the 2008 national championship game, he had “John 3:16” written under his eyes.
Tebow will join his mother in sending an anti-abortion message to millions of CBS viewers on February 7, Super Bowl Sunday. We have not seen the ad, but we can guess that this message will be that abortion is immoral (and by extension, should be banned).
Tim Tebow and his family have been involved in Christian evangelism for years and they play a major role in the Christian Fascist movement. His father, Bob, runs the Bob Tebow Evangelistic Foundation and he helped start the Campus Crusade for Christ at the University of Florida in 1966. The men in the Tebow family have been in leading positions of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes since 1976. Tim’s mother, Pam Tebow, is the daughter of an army colonel, and along with her husband was a missionary in the Philippines for a number of years. In a keynote speech in conjunction with the 2008 “iTell” State Evangelism Conference, she told women “God gives us a manual [the Bible] for our lives.” Bob Avakian in Away With All Gods! chronicles the extremely oppressive relations and beliefs that are upheld in Pam Tebow’s “manual”—one of them being slavery.
There has been opposition to this ad, including from women’s organizations that point to the fact that CBS refused to run a Super Bowl ad in 2004 from the United Church of Christ that promoted an open door policy for gays in their church. How convenient that CBS changed their policy just in time to run this ad.
But beyond the hypocrisy here, the fundamental point of opposition should not be “equality” for every view or not allowing athletes to have a political voice. The point is that what is being put forward with this ad is wrong and is a horror for women all around the world and it’s being run in the U.S., where a woman is beaten by her partner every 15 seconds and three women are killed every day by possessive lovers and abusive husbands. Plain and simple, this ad is a continuation of the oppression and hatred of women that gets played out every minute in this country and throughout the world. This ad is for all those who support the cold-blooded, calculated murder of abortion doctor George Tiller. Fuck this ad and anyone who has anything to do with it! We should drown this ad out with our demand for “Abortion on Demand Without Apology!”
On Friday, January 29, the Michael Slate Show (radio KPFK LA) devoted a segment to this anti-abortion ad, interviewing Amanda Marcotte who has written an article, “What Does Football Have to Do With Abortion Again?” In this article, Marcotte writes, “If these women weren’t given the right to choose, they would be reduced to walking uteruses, whose feelings and choices are essentially irrelevant.”
In taking on the Christian Fascists and their anti-abortion campaign, the centerfold in issue #166 of Revolution, uses science to prove that a fetus is not a baby and that it does not become a human being until it is born and takes its first breath.
We need a movement in this country that brings into being what is portrayed on the Revolution t-shirt that on the front has the 1968 Olympic athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos with their fists in the air and states, “We Need a Lot More Of This...” and on the back is a football player pointing to the “heavens,” and states, “...Not This!”
Abortion on demand and
without apology!
Women are not incubators!
Abortion is not murder!
Check with Revolution Books in your area for availability of T-shirts with the above graphics on the front and back.
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