Both ads build on stereotypes. The feminist answer perpetuates the wage gap myth and makes the usual complaints about how awful it is to be a woman. I think these are silly since relationships are hard and there will always be communications issues between the sexes since we’re wired differently. Society also places different expectations on men and women. Deal with it. Men have issues too.  The only difference: men seem much more capable at laughing at these stereotypes, whereas women whine about them.

Warning: like most things feminist, the second video contains some language. The lefty gals enjoy being crass.

The Dodge ad is created to sell a product, but the feminist ad is a little long and doesn’t give a call to action. Whoever created it did a lot of work, but there’s no web site or activism appeal. Wasted opportunity for them.

Update: Not surprisingly, Broadsheet likes the ad calling it a “ego-blistering spoof!” Feministing claims “You must absolutely watch…” Amanda Hess at The Sexist has a full transcript of the video.

There you go. Feminists fighting the terrible front lines of silly Super Bowl ads. Glad to see that there aren’t more important battles out there.

1) NOW doesn’t represent all women, just women who support abortion without restrictions. Jenkins writes:

I’m pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I’ve heard in the past week, I’ll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the “National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time.” For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow’s 30-second ad hasn’t even run yet, but it already has provoked “The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us” to reveal something important about themselves: They aren’t actually “pro-choice” so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Now, where have I heard that before? Possibly here?

Many have complained that this isn’t fair because CBS has apparently changed a policy. Get over it. Do you really think they’re going to favor a fervently conservative organization? CBS is in the business to make money not win brownie points with Christians. If Focus was the first group to benefit from a policy change, that leaves feminist groups looking like whiny kids. At some point in women’s history, the “It’s not Fair!” charge has to end.

2) Free speech works both ways.

This is a lesson that both liberals and some right-wing groups could learn. Just because someone says something that you don’t like, you can’t silence them. Free speech is still a right in this country. As an organization, it is your job to ensure that your message is strong enough to withstand attacks from the other side. Clearly, NOW has issues with the validity of their message when they won’t even allow it to be debated. Jenkins explains:

Let me be clear again: I couldn’t disagree with Tebow more. It’s my own belief that the state has no business putting its hand under skirts. But I don’t care that we differ. Some people will care that the ad is paid for by Focus on the Family, a group whose former spokesman, James Dobson, says loathsome things about gays. Some will care that Tebow is a creationist. Some will care that CBS has rejected a gay dating service ad. None of this is the point. CBS owns its broadcast and can run whatever advertising it wants, and Tebow has a right to express his beliefs publicly. Just as I have the right to reject or accept them after listening — or think a little more deeply about the issues. If the pro-choice stance is so precarious that a story about someone who chose to carry a risky pregnancy to term undermines it, then CBS is not the problem.

Tebow’s ad, by the way, never mentions abortion; like the player himself, it’s apparently soft-spoken. It simply has the theme “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.” This is what NOW has labeled “extraordinarily offensive and demeaning.” But if there is any demeaning here, it’s coming from NOW, via the suggestion that these aren’t real questions, and that we as a Super Bowl audience are too stupid or too disinterested to handle them on game day.

3) The abortion debate should be about eliminating the need for abortion not destroying the other side. I absolutely agree with Jenkins here, and believe that pro-lifers could learn a thing or two.

There’s not enough space in the sports pages for the serious weighing of values that constitutes this debate, but surely everyone in both camps, pro-choice or pro-life, wishes the “need” for abortions wasn’t so great. Which is precisely why NOW is so wrong to take aim at Tebow’s ad.

A liberal friend of mine noted on Facebook that no one is winning the culture war. I agree. Rather than proactively working to reduce the number of abortions or the need for them, both sides just take pot-shots at each other and struggle to have the final word.

This is a touchy subject within the pro-life community. Perhaps I’m a pragmatist, but I believe that under any circumstance abortion is murder, so we should work to build a society where it is not accepted. Part of this is restoring the sanctity of human life, which pro-life groups work towards. It also involves practical public policy decisions regarding access to contraception and sex education. The jury is still out on what type of sex ed works (there’s a new study out today that shows abstinence does work). Even though I used to write grants on reproductive health programs at a nonprofit, I’m still unclear what works best, and I’m familiar with the data. However, I believe that pro-lifers need to be a little more willing to work on these issues.

Conversely, anti-lifers need to face facts about how terrible abortion is. There’s nothing wrong with parental notification or requiring a woman to have a sonogram before aborting. If you are willing to end a life that you created, you should have to face that life. Convicts facing the death penalty at least get to face their victims or families of victims. The unborn do not receive that right. Instead, the anti-life movement makes it appear that abortion is some magic pill that makes a baby go “poof!” I think they’d get a lot further with their “choice” argument and feeble attempts to claim that they want to “reduce” abortions, if they came clean about the horrors of the medical procedure.

I fail to see why this is a big deal.

The Tebows, a strong Christian family with misguided football loyalties, made a commercial with Focus on the Family about their choices. Focus then came up with the cash to buy the spot from CBS. Why then does this create controversy? Free speech works both ways.

If this ad was purchased by NARAL or EMILY’S List about how Tebow supported his girlfriend in her choice to abort due to an unplanned pregnancy, wouldn’t these groups applaud?

When did our society arrive at a place that “celebrating life,” as Focus on the Family puts it, is controversial? This ad highlights one woman’s choice. She chose not to abort and look what happened. (Who knows what might have happened if all the aborted people were allowed to live?) Women need to know that choosing life is just as valid a decision. That option is rarely given any attention. Just look at all the anger aimed at Palin for knowingly giving birth to a baby with Down’s Syndrome.*

Educating women about all of their choices should be a priority of the women’s movement. However, this is only one more example of how the anti-life crowd only educates women on pre-approved “choices.” Women deserve to know all of their options. How often do they get those at an abortion clinic or Planned Parenthood facility? Lila Rose has exposed how often women hear about adoption or life at those facilities.

Anti-life forces are in an uproar, but they can only speculate about what’s in the ad. All Focus on the Family has said is:

The 30-second spot from the international family-help organization will feature college football star Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam. They will share a personal story centered on the theme of “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.”

Jim Daly, president and CEO of Focus on the Family, said the chance to partner with the Tebows and lift up a meaningful message about family and life comes at the right moment in the culture, because “families need to be inspired.”

“Tim and Pam share our respect for life and our passion for helping families thrive,” Daly said. “They live what we see every day – that the desire for family closeness is written on the hearts of every generation. Focus on the Family is about nurturing that desire and strengthening families by empowering them with the tools they need to live lives rooted in morals and values.”

Broadsheet admits that no one knows what is in the ad, but since the Women’s Media Center has launched a petition, it must be alarming. Oh my gosh! A petition! Tracy Clark-Flory writes:

A Focus on the Family spokesperson told the Washington Post that the ad isn’t overtly political, but a petition by the Women’s Media Center argues otherwise: “By offering one of the most coveted advertising spots of the year to an anti-equality, anti-choice, homophobic organization, CBS is aligning itself with a political stance that will damage its reputation, alienate viewers, and discourage consumers from supporting its shows and advertisers.” There is no denying the organization’s founder, James Dobson, is about as polarizing a political figure as they come.

The problem isn’t that CBS sold the spot to Focus on the Family. The problem is that the anti-life crowd is losing the messaging war. It’s possible to talk about celebrating life without politicizing it. It’s easy to sell pictures of happy families and babies. How many mothers have ever publicly said they regret choosing life? Compare that to the numbers of women who regret having an abortion. Life is the positive. Abortion is the negative.

How do you sell abortion? It’s almost impossible to talk about abortion or “choice” without involving polarizing politics. The images are always of angry women protesting and holding signs. What’s their alternative? Pictures of aborted babies that highlight the truth of abortion?  The anti-lifers are losing this issue. Poll numbers prove it. It explains why anti-life feminists lose it when Focus on the Family celebrates life with Tim Tebow and his family, or Sarah and Bristol Palin are on the cover of a tabloid.

Abortion is still legal in this country. Even though Roe vs. Wade is a horrible judicial decision (an opinion asserted by all sides) it’s unlikely to be overturned any time in the near future. However, every positive pro-life message, every Bristol Palin magazine cover, every photo of amazing neo-natal surgeries, ultrasounds or medical advances put another nail in the coffin of abortion’s public image.

“Choice” is abstract. “Life” is concrete and visual. Every time that you show that a fetus is viable and valued, from medicine science news to Lacey Peterson laws, it hurts the public perception of abortion.  These images don’t affect laws or legal precedents, but they expose the fraud that the “choice” crowd continues to disseminate. That’s why they focus on “choice.” As soon as you focus on a baby, you lose the debate.

As the “choice” debate unravels, it shows that the only difference between a premature baby getting the best neo-natal care and an aborted fetus is desire. If the “planned” or “wanted” pregnancies are the best justifications for abortion, these groups are in trouble. That’s a flimsy excuse for murder, and an extremely brutal murder at that. If abortion was re-created outside of the womb to kill a person, it could only be described as gruesome and barbaric. Why do we continue to do this to the most helpless members of our society? Since it’s hidden and only happens on the inside of women’s bodies, not many people understand how brutal the abortion medical procedure truly is.

Medical science is on the side of life. Rather than spending millions to defend abortion, why don’t these groups work on educating impoverished women on birth control or help them earn an education? (I wish more pro-life groups did the same.) All sides should make abortion the absolute worst-case option. There’s enough money and nonprofit infrastructure to make abortion unnecessary in our society. The problem is that feminists need it to survive.

The simple matter is that abortion and all “attacks” on it are cash cows for groups like NOW, EMILY’S List, Feminist Majority and NARAL. Without us pesky pro-lifers, the money stream from supporters would dry up. These groups need to manufacture crises in order to survive since public opinion and the progress of science is against them.

The pro-life side will always have supporters due to our religious faith and the issues of euthanasia, stem cell research and cloning. Our side is evolving. The abortion side is dying. The writing is on the wall for abortion supporters, and that is why their reactions get more hysterical and ridiculous. They ought to be thankful to Focus on the Family for giving them a something to protest since “women’s issues” have become little more than arguments over botox taxes, middle-age columnists regretting not getting married and having babies and debates if Lady Gaga represents feminist ideals.

*Why is the special needs community not more outraged at abortion? Only 10% of special needs children are born, which reeks of eugenics and is a borderline holocaust for this community. What does our society reflect when we only allow the desirable and perfect to be born?