Friday, February 5, 2010

Tebow Super Bowl Ad Controversy


Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an attempt by feminist lawyer Gloria Allred to get CBS to drop the pro-life Super Bowl ad featuring Tim Tebow and his mother:

Gloria Allred is no stranger to the subject of abortion, so it is not surprising that she wants to kill this pro-life ad. Her letter to Les Moonves of CBS, available at RadarOnline.com, wants the ad pulled because it is allegedly guilty of “misleading advertising.”

Allred, who has not seen the ad, charges that when Tebow’s mother was being advised by doctors in the Philippines to consider an abortion (she was on antibiotics for a pregnancy illness), it was illegal there to have one. In a monumental stretch, Allred reasons that the ad should disclose this information, otherwise it is “misleading.”

What is really misleading is Allred’s duplicity. Several years ago, she represented Amber Frey in a case related to the death of Laci Peterson; Peterson’s husband, Scott, was convicted of murdering both her and the baby she was carrying, a boy they named Connor. In an interview she gave to Hannity and Colmes on the Fox News Channel on June 5, 2003, Allred found it useful to her case to emphasize the humanness of Peterson’s baby: “And the fact that there are two individuals who are dead there, Laci and Connor, that has to be the most important consideration of everything.” For once, she was right.

Allred’s confession in 2003 undercuts her credibility—to say nothing of her ethical standing—to make the case against this Super Bowl ad. She knows that Tim Tebow is alive today because his mother did not abort him. To top it off, she can’t even deal respectfully with this issue. Her snide remark, which is in the letter to Moonves, is classic. “As the story is reported,” she says, “Tim’s mother decides to take her pregnancy to term anyway and give birth to Tim. Apparently they have lived happily ever after since that time.” And apparently, this woman has no shame