The truth behind Tebow's tale
The star athlete's "pro-life" story has a dark underbelly
By Tracy Clark-Flory
For just a moment, forget the debate about whether advocacy ads belong in the year's biggest night in sports. The Center for Reproductive Rights has taken an entirely different tack in fighting Focus on the Family's scheduled Super Bowl spot: Countering the personal anti-abortion tale Tim Tebow and his mother are expected to deliver with cold, hard facts.
In case you haven't been reading Broadsheet lately -- for shame! -- and are unfamiliar with the particulars of Pam Tebow's story: While pregnant working as a missionary in the Philippines, she fell ill with amoebic dysentery and was treated with robust antibiotics, which she says doctors told her had caused fetal damage, but she refused their advice that she have an abortion for her own safety. Luckily, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy -- and to a perfect anti-abortion tale. Only, one detail has so far been excluded from Tebow's public tellings of the story: abortion was, and still is, illegal in the Philippines. There isn't even a single exception allowed for cases where the mother's life is in danger. In a letter to CBS protesting the Super Bowl spot, CRR explains:
Physicians and midwives who perform abortions in the Philippines face six years in prison, and may have their licenses suspended or revoked. Women who receive abortions -- no matter the reason -- may be punished with imprisonment for two to six years. Abortion is so deeply stigmatized in the Philippines that women who seek care for complications from unsafe, illegal abortions are routinely punished by healthcare workers, who threaten to report them to the police, harass them verbally and physically, and delay care.
It took less than an hour to reach a verdict in the Dr. George Tiller murder trial. Early Friday, the jury found Scott Roeder guilty of first-degree murder for gunning down the Wichita, Kan. abortion provider in May. The 51-year-old was also found guilty on two counts of aggravated assault against witnesses at the scene of the shooting.
This is just as expected after Judge Warren Wilbert ruled Thursday that jurors would not be allowed to consider a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter or second-degree murder. The defense was hoping to make the case that Roeder honestly believed Tiller posed an imminent threat to "unborn children" and that using deadly force against him was justified. On the stand, Roeder admitted to shooting the doctor and expressed no regret: "There was nothing being done, and the legal process had been exhausted, and these babies were dying every day."
Luckily, the legal process has not been exhausted in Roeder's case: He will be sentenced in March and prosecutors are expected to seek a "Hard 50," meaning he would have to wait five decades before being considered for parole.
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