{"id":230355,"date":"2010-01-26T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rhrealitycheck.org\/blog\/2010\/01\/25\/what-does-football-have-do-with-abortion-again"},"modified":"2010-01-25T22:52:19","modified_gmt":"2010-01-26T03:52:19","slug":"what-does-football-have-to-do-with-abortion-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/230355","title":{"rendered":"What Does Football Have to Do With Abortion Again?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nRound two of asking the question "What
\ndoes abortion have to do with football?"<\/a> In this case, Florida Gators
\nquarterback Tim Tebow is trying to marry the hyper-masculine world of football
\nwith the hyper-patriarchal belief that women should not have a basic right to
\ncontrol their own fertility. Focus on the Family has dumped millions
\nof dollars<\/a> into an ad to play during the Superbowl (which CBS has agreed to air<\/a> despite its own "anti-advocacy policy) that tells the story of
\nhow Tebow’s anti-abortion mother Pam Tebow refused to abort a problem
\npregnancy, and risked her life to give birth to a boy that would go on to win
\nthe Heisman trophy.\n<\/p>\n

\nThere are many reasons to object to this ad. For those of us
\nwho don’t find the existence of the Heisman trophy, much less any particular
\nwinner, a compelling enough reason to give up our basic human rights, the
\nimplicit anti-choice argument of such an ad is hard to swallow. For those of us
\nmarried to logic, the fact that there are billions of former fetuses walking
\naround without a Heisman trophy seems to undermine the implicit promises made
\nto women in the ad. For those of us who are already anxious about the
\nhyper-masculine culture of football, tying ads arguing against women’s basic
\nhuman rights to the sport is an alarming display of open worship of male
\ndominance. For those of us who just like to watch football, spoiling the game
\nby tying arrogant anti-woman attitudes to it is insulting.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut what I find interesting is that while most people who
\nwatch this ad will understand that it’s meant to be an argument against a
\nwoman’s right to abortion, in fact what I’m seeing is even more evidence that
\nthe right to choose is critical to women’s dignity and equality.\u00a0 I’m
\nfar from the first person to point out<\/a> that the religious right has fallen
\ninto the habit of celebrating women who made the choice they approve of, and by
\naccident, this puts them in the position of celebrating choice. But it really
\ngoes deeper than that. This strategy of celebrating women who have babies when
\nothers might not really points out how the dignity of all women—including
\nanti-abortion women—requires the right to choose.\n<\/p>\n

\nPam Tebow is being celebrated as a maternal hero right after
\nSarah
\nand Bristol Palin got a cover for In Touch<\/em> magazine<\/a> celebrating their
\nhappiness at making a choice that the pro-choice movement fully supports, which
\nis the right to choose to give birth. The common denominator in all these
\nstories is that the woman at the center is being celebrated for her bravery in
\nmaking a specific choice—and that if she didn’t have the right to choose,
\nthen she wouldn’t be a hero at all.\n<\/p>\n

\nUnder an anti-choice regime, women are not
\nregarded as moral actors who can do things like make choices that can be
\nevaluated by outsiders according to their own moral compass. If these women
\nweren’t given the right to choose, they would be reduced to walking uteruses,
\nwhose feelings and choices are essentially irrelevant, since they, like all
\nwomen, make babies with pretty much no say in the matter. \u00a0But because these women live in a society that
\ngives them a right to choose, they are being treated like moral actors—like
\nreal people, even!\n<\/p>\n

\nNot that I think the religious right particularly desires to
\nuphold women as moral actors who make choices. Obviously, the hope behind all
\nthese ads and covers is to take that right away and return to a situation where
\nthe state assumes women aren’t capable of making their own choices. These ads
\nare about putting a positive spin on a misogynist message. "Look!" the ads and
\nmagazine covers say, "We don’t hate women. We celebrate them as heroes!" But of
\ncourse, they only do that because they have to, because the existence of
\nabortion rights has put them in this situation. Without abortion rights, even
\ndisingenuous celebrations of women’s autonomy will dry right up.\n<\/p>\n

\nI’m sure someone could disagree with this assessment by
\npointing out that the main message of the Tebow ad and the Palin cover is that
\nbecause these women are happy with choice A, then all women should be happy
\nwith that choice, and that therefore other choices should be eliminated. (This
\nis especially dangerous when considering that Pam Tebow had an often fatal
\ncondition, and that she may be encouraging other women to die in the vain hope
\nof producing a football star.)\n<\/p>\n

\nBut if you think about it for a minute, the message falls
\napart. To argue that because woman A is happy with choice A, woman B should be
\nhappy with choice A is to say that all women are exactly alike. \u00a0"All women are alike" is a standard sexist
\nassumption, and so people will buy into it.\u00a0 But by the measurement of their own
\narguments, you can see they don’t believe this—they’re admitting that
\ndifferent women make different choices, and that therefore different women are,
\ngosh darnit (like Sarah Palin would say), different. And so maybe the same
\nexact choice is not right, since different people have different needs and
\ndesires.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe anti-choice argument is that women who make choice B
\nmight be different, but that’s because they’ve strayed from their one true
\npath. The implication is that Pam Tebow and the Palins are on that path. But
\nwhat’s the evidence to say that Tebow and the Palins have it all figured out,
\nand that women who have abortions don’t? The Heisman trophy isn’t enough,
\nbecause most of us know at least one person (our mother) who has chosen to give
\nbirth and didn’t get a Heisman trophy winner. Most of us know hundreds and
\npossibly thousands of such women. \u00a0And to
\nsay that Sarah Palin made a choice that worked out for her is to invite someone
\nto ask about the choices of all the billions of women who aren’t Sarah Palin. I
\ncan’t wear her clothes or sleep in her bed, so why do you think her exact
\nchoice is the right one for me? If you can trust Sarah Palin with a choice, why
\ncan’t you trust me?\n<\/p>\n

\nThe standard sexist strategy throughout history has been to
\nhide women from the public eye and force women to adhere to a single standard,
\nto prevent these threatening questions from rising to the surface. But because
\nof feminism, the right wing has to at least pay lip service to the idea that
\nwomen are a diverse group and are also moral actors. Since they admit that women are
\nhuman beings, we should seize the moment and point out that therefore women
\ndeserve freedom and dignity.\n<\/p>\n

\nLike people capable of making choices. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Round two of asking the question "What does abortion have to do with football?" In this case, Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow is trying to marry the hyper-masculine world of football with the hyper-patriarchal belief that women should not have a basic right to control their own fertility. Focus on the Family has dumped millions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}