On 7 February, the New Orleans Saints will make their first ever appearance in American football's Super Bowl, traveling to Miami to face off against the Indianapolis Colts in a competition that's as much about the commercials as the game itself.
Also making an appearance for the first time will be an anti-abortion ad, paid for by the evangelical group Focus on the Family and featuring star college quarterback Tim Tebow, known for painting Bible quotations under his eyes during games. The ad, "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life", cost Focus on the Family as much as $2.8m, will reportedly tell the story of how Tebow's mother defied medical recommendations to have an abortion and instead gave birth to Tim, and may be viewed by as many as 100 million Americans.
Reminiscent of the anti-abortion ad created by the anti-choice Catholic group Fidelis, which was rejected for broadcast last year, "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life" doesn't have the decidedly inconvenient problem of having been produced without the participation of its central figure.
(The Fidelis ad, called "Imagine Spot 1", ostensibly encouraged viewers to "imagine" the possibilities for a foetus shown in an ultrasound, but helpfully did the imagining for them, as text onscreen, with a backdrop of crescendoing violin music, read: "This child's future is a broken home … he will be abandoned by his father … his single mother will struggle to raise him … despite the hardships he will endure … this child … will become … the first African-American President." The video then cuts to a picture of President Barack Obama, accompanied by the text: "Life. Imagine the potential.")
The message of this year's ad nonetheless carries the same implicit message: Imagine if Tim Tebow's mother had aborted him.
If you don't find it quite as inspiring to imagine the world without a successful collegiate athlete as it is to imagine the world without the trailblazing president of a global superpower, well, that's your problem.
And it's your problem, too, if you happen to object to an anti-abortion premise that makes no distinction between an ill woman with a wanted pregnancy deciding not to terminate, and a woman with an unwanted pregnancy.
Wantedness is a variable with which manipulative musings like these sorts of adverts don't concern themselves – and not just because their sponsors aren't in the business of making wanted lives more livable, despite their claims to be "pro-life". It is, simply, more convenient – and decidedly so – to pretend that it makes no difference in the course and potential of a life whether the person living it was wanted by her or his parents. Their message would be eminently more complicated if they did not diligently ignore the observable ways in which parental resentments born of imposed obligations stifle the lives in their charge. Better, then, and easier, to tacitly reinforce that dusty old chestnut about how a mothering instinct will "kick in" postpartum, irrespective of one's desire to mother, as if the willingness to assume responsibility for another life is merely a foregone conclusion etched into every woman's very DNA, and not a decision individuals make with their ability to reason.
Which is not to say that such ads make no effort to appeal to women's reason. Implicit, and not very subtly so, is the narrative that a pregnant woman should prostrate herself at the feet of the Fates because of the possibility that she may give birth to A Great Man.
And let us not mince words: It is no coincidence that we are meant to "imagine" the snuffing out of a man's potential via abortion, forestalling as it does our "imagining" the protagonist's potential come to a screeching, shuddering halt in the shadow of an unwanted pregnancy that cannot be terminated.
Imagine that.
