“By now you’ve most likely heard all about it — the anti-choice group Focus on the Family is spending millions to run an ad during the Super Bowl featuring football player Tim Tebow and his mom talking about a deeply personal medical decision she made years ago. She decided to continue her pregnancy against medical advice, due to what had been diagnosed as a high-risk pregnancy.

People have been asking us at Planned Parenthood what we think about the ad and Mrs. Tebow’s decision. It’s simple. Planned Parenthood respects the right of every woman to make important medical decisions for herself.

Mrs. Tebow weighed medical and moral considerations and decided what was right for her. She made her choice in private, and without government interference. That’s exactly what we want every woman to be able to do.

The truth is, the Tebows’ experience is completely consistent with what Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses have learned from the millions of women they’ve served over nearly a century. Women take decisions about their health very seriously. They consider their doctors’ advice, they talk with their loved ones and people they trust, including religious leaders, and they carefully weigh all considerations before making the best decision for themselves and their families.

That’s the way it should be. And that should be our shared goal — on Super Bowl Sunday and every day.

I hope you’ll show your support for ensuring that every woman makes her own personal medical decisions by adding your name to a brief statement from Planned Parenthood.

Thank you for joining with us today.

Sincerely,

Cecile Richards, President
Planned Parenthood Federation of America”

While the Right has been attempting to co-opt the perception of Choice onto its own proscriptive agenda, Planned Parenthood has essentially said ‘Here, take it.’ Never mind that what Mrs Tebow really did had nothing to do with choice but with a moral demand which, had things turned out a little differently, could have cost her her life, her four children a mother, her husband a wife. Katha Pollitt, in another piece from The Nation http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100222/pollitt, wrote:

“It’s maddening that the people who want to take away women’s right to choose have annexed “choice” to their own cause. If the law compelled women like Sarah and Bristol Palin and Pam Tebow to continue problem pregnancies, there would be no heroism in doing so–you don’t get much credit for taking the difficult path if that’s your only option. Opponents of abortion rights want you to forget that if they had their way there would be no choice.”

Planned Parenthood doesn’t even mention CBS’s justification for selling commercial time – a change in policy – to Focus on the Family, let alone the inherent hypocrisy owing to CBS’s immediately previous policy of avoiding “controversial” content in Big Game commercials. Rather than taking a stand, defining what choice really means and pointing out that the Tebows’, and the Right’s, position is precisely NOT representative of a pro-choice position – PP Pres. Richards’ letter practically wants us to believe Mrs Tebow had received Planned Parenthood counseling before making her decision not to abort – Planned Parenthood has caved in completely to the Right’s manner of framing the debate.

There could be no better example of why we need comprehensive analysis of such issues as women’s (reproductive) rights and clear action stemming from such analyses, as opposed to the narrow single-issue advocacy of a group like Planned Parenthood, which seems to lose sight of its ostensive mission when the wind blows in unexpected ways.