But He’d Still Be a Human Being!!

I’m not sure how much media attention this is receiving, but I thought it was interesting all the same.

CBS is causing controversy by agreeing to air (for the full going rate of $2.5 – $2.8 million dollars) a 30-second advertisement sponsored by Focus on the Family and featuring Tim Tebow and his mother.  If, like me, you had no idea who Tim Tebow is prior to this issue being raised, read about him here.  Tebow’s mother was pressured to have an abortion when she discovered she was pregnant with him.  Unlike most abortions, this pressure was based on actual medical issues that threatened the mother’s life.  Obviously, she didn’t have the abortion.  Focus on the Family claims that the ad is simply going to affirm life.  Certain feminist groups are disgusted that someone would have the temerity to challenge the prevailing minority wisdom that says abortion rights are a done deal and never to be revisited in public discussion of any kind. 

This gets interesting in a recent episode of The View, in which one of the show’s interviewers had a rather controversial statement to dismiss both the pro-life decision as well as the desire by Focus on the Family to air a spot during the Superbowl. 

You can see the clip here, but the transcript of the relevant statement is below:

“The only argument against any of it is,that,  you know, he could just as easily become some kind of rapist pedophile.  I mean, you don’t know what someone’s going to be.”


Joy Behar’s statement continues further as she backpeddles slightly from this statement.  What most people will get upset about is what a terrible example she’s chosen.  They’ll focus on the incendiary nature of her statement, as this other coverage of the incident predicts.  However, the awful sounding language is not the point we need to pay attention to.

The point is that whether Tim Tebow grew up to be the impressive sportsman he is today, or had grown up to be a pedophile rapist, he still would have grown up to be a human being!

Abortion rights cannot be maintained simply on the insistence on a woman’s right to decide.  It must be maintained on the basis that somehow or another – by arbitrarily drawn lines and shaky proclamations by the medical community based on nothing more than expediency – what is aborted during an abortion is not a human being.  It must be maintained that the ‘collection of cells’ in the uterus – as pro-choicers are fond of calling an unborn baby – is not actually human, and therefore can be disposed of at the mother’s discretion.  No different than a fingernail or a lock of hair.

If that ‘collection of cells’ is actually a human being from conception, however,  then abortion is murder, and the woman’s right to choose whether or not to murder the human being inside her becomes legally as ridiculous as it actually sounds.  Nobody else has a right to choose whether or not to kill an innocent human being.  The woman’s right to choose would have to be relegated to where it rightfully belongs – the right to choose whether or not to engage in sexual intercourse.

Behar’s deft commentary points out the fact that the question isn’t whether Tim Tebow’s mother would have given birth to a human being.  Of course she would have – and did!  That’s what babies inside the womb are, and that’s what they continue to be outside the womb – human beings.  This poor attempt to justify abortion based on the type of person a human being may or may not grow into being is one that I’m sure Behar wasn’t intending to make.  But it’s certainly going to get her some attention.