Not unsurprisingly Pam Tebow, the mother of NFL player Tim Tebow, has endorsed Colorado’s Personhood ballot measure, Amendment 62. The anti-choice measure is the only personhood proposition to have made it onto the ballot in the country.

Pam and Tim Tebow, if you recall, were the stars of a controversial television commercial aired during the Superbowl on CBS, earlier this year. The multi-million dollar spot was paid for by the extreme, fundamentalist Christian, anti-choice, anti-gay organization, Focus on the Family and featured Pam and Tim Tebow discussing Pam’s decision to bring her pregnancy with Tim to term against her physician’s wishes at the time. The controversy arose over the fact that network policy for all network stations bars certain kinds of overt advocacy advertisements and yet this ad, from a known politically active, anti-choice, anti-gay organization was accepted. In years past, in fact, CBS rejected ads by groups like the United Church of Christ for focusing on their stance of welcoming gay and lesbian members into their congregations. While the ad was truly a “soft sell” in terms of advocacy against women’s choices, the backing organization is anything but subtle when it comes to their extreme anti-woman, anti-gay agenda.  It’s why women’s groups and others launched a campaign to try and have the ad removed. Though the spot did run, most say it did little to sway anyone.

Pam Tebow’s story, however, was ultimately revealed as highly manipulated for FoF’s exploitation, baring little resemblance to the truth. Did her doctors in the (heavily Catholic, anti-abortion) Philippines, tell her to have an abortion, late in her pregnancy, to save her own life after experiencing placental abruption, as she stated in one interview? Or was it that she visited her doctor in the United States, early on in her pregnancy, who told her the fetus was just a mass of tissue and that she should abort to “save her life”? The answers were never clear and her story, more generally, became an anti-choice battle-cry. The answer, in fact, is that this was, as it is with any woman’s decision about what to do about an unintended pregnancy, her own private decision and should not be fodder for anyone’s judgements. Except that Tebow is using her story to push for laws that would ban other women from making their own decisions about their health and lives. Her personal decision is now political fuel to restrict other women from being allowed the same courtesy – to make a private decision about herself and the embryo or fetus growing inside.

The irony of Pam Tebow’s recent endorsement of Amendment 62 is how predictable it is. CBS and Focus on the Family tried to sell Tebow’s Superbowl advertisement as simply a “celebration of families.” CBS said they found no basis for rejecting the ad and an FoF representative said, “…There’s nothing political or controversial about it.” Yet, of course, it clearly is political when an organization known for throwing its weight behind policies and legislation (including Amendment 62!) meant to restrict women’s health access and the rights of gay people, pays for a commercial featuring a woman who now has thrown her hat in the ring as a politlcal advocate. In a press release issued about Tebow’s Amendment 62 endorsement, the advertisement is called “pro-life” and both Tebow and FoF are called out for their support of the measure:

Pam Tebow made headline news when she and Heisman-trophy winning son Tim Tebow appeared in a pro-life television ad during the 2010 Superbowl. The real headline story was not the ad, but Pam’s refusal to let doctor’s take her son’s life while she was pregnant. The ad was sponsored by Focus on the Family, which has also urged Colorado voters to vote “Yes” on Amendment 62. [emphasis added]

Amendment 62 (and the Personhood movement more broadly) has been covered extensively on Rewire for its extreme anti-choice impact. Not only would the amendment criminalize abortion and certain forms of contraception but it may also outlaw in-vitro fertilization and have other disastrous impacts on pregnant women as well.