So now that we’ve had a chance to see what all the controversy has been about, I’ve started wondering: was the outcry over the Tim Tebow Super Bowl commercial worth it? Or was it much ado about nothing?

As it turned out, there were actually two ads… one that aired before the game, and one that aired during…. and you can see both here. In my opinion, the commercials were fairly innocuous… if you hadn’t heard of the controversy beforehand, you might not even know what the ads were about. And this is one of the rare instances where I take great comfort in the general apathy of Americans, as I would imagine few took the time to get off their couches and visit the Focus on the Family website before their collective attention spans were drawn to the latest Doritos commercial.

And thank goodness for that, because the Tebows seemed to have saved all the crazy for their interview at the Focus on the Family website. (I really wanted to embed the video of the interview here, but Focus on the Family isn’t allowing it as of right now… so, unfortunately, you have to visit the website to see it. If you do, stick around until the end… that’s when it starts getting good. Or, more accurately, “good.”)

Look… whether you believe it or not, I don’t begrudge the Tebows their religious beliefs. Their beliefs aren’t anywhere close to mine, but they’re entitled to them. When I’m writing these blogs, I generally try to make a pretty sincere effort to attack arguments, not beliefs, mainly because I don’t like the idea of telling someone not to believe in Jesus any more than the thought of someone telling me that I should.

But the Tebows kind of went a tad overboard during this interview. When asked what they’d say to a woman who was experiencing an unexpected pregnancy, Mr. Tebow actually turns to the camera and says, “Don’t kill your baby.” And while that flair for the dramatic may be offensive and simplistic, it’s Mrs. Tebow’s response that bothers me a bit more. She tells these women that they have a choice… with the implicit connotation, of course, that they should “choose life.”

Yes, Mrs. Tebow… women do have a choice. And that’s a great thing. But the reason why they have that choice is because of the tireless work of pro-choice advocates, who have devoted their lives to ensuring access to all choices. One of the things that always irritates me is the extremely false notion that pro-choice advocates want every pregnant woman to have an abortion. While a ridiculous argument, it actually works… for whatever reason, some people actually believe it. But I’d like to remind Mrs. Tebow that it’s not us who are wishing to limit options… it’s people like her. People who fool women into believing that their at-risk pregnancies will end in a fairy tale. People who say to other women: “You have to do this, no matter how you feel about the matter.”

So, at the end of the day, I’m glad that Mrs. Tebow chose to continue her pregnancy, as it’s a decision that she seems comfortable with. But I’m even happier that we can still use the word “choice” to describe this decision… that those choices exist… no matter how hard people like the Tebows fight against them.

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