FARGO, N.D. — Discussing the anti-abortion ad scheduled to run on Sunday during the Super Bowl, a CBS sportswriter named Gregg Doyel put it this way: "If you're a sports fan, and I am. ... It's not a day to discuss abortion. For it, against it, I don't care what you are. On Super Sunday, I don't care what I am. Feb. 7 is simply not the day to have that discussion."

Sorry to say, he was overruled by the CBS muckety-mucks who stepped away from a policy avoiding advocacy advertisements during the Super Bowl. With the change, yet another American event becomes subject to polarizing politics. More to the point, the flavor of the Super Bowl changes. Billed as the all-American fun day second only to the Fourth of July in magnitude, Super Bowl Sunday is a tribute to the American fondness for excessiveness: Forget the serious stuff and party hearty.

For those of us who rarely have much interest in the teams playing the overhyped annual game — but also hate to miss the parties — the roll out of new commercials in conjunction with the big game has been a nice diversion. In fact, over the years, judging the entertainment value of commercials and ranking them became the other bona fide Super Bowl sport. That's not to say some ads weren't offensive, but their crass nature was cultural, not political (certainly not religious), and showed a lack of good taste rather than the proselytizing of one political group or another.

CBS changes that good-natured national activity by airing an advocacy ad from Focus on the Family. Make no mistake, Focus on the Family is a right-wing political organization dedicated to turning fundamentalist Christian ideology into law. (Remember the infamous "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America"? How does it keep its 501(c)(3) status?)

Ministries to 'cure' gays and lesbians
Besides opposing reproductive choice, the organization is homophobic and has ministries to "cure" gays and lesbians. Focus on the Family promotes school-sponsored prayer, corporal punishment, abstinence-only sex education, and teaching creationism/intelligent design. It's not Pepsi. Or even Viagra.

For sure, its ad won't include dancing bears.   

CBS insists that the ad, itself, isn't controversial. Focus on the Family insists it's just an ad celebrating family. (Does anybody really think they'd pay $2.5-2.8 million for that?) What we know about the ad is that it features Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam. Their story, as told here, for example, in the Gainesville Sun, is that Pam Tebow, who was in the Philippines at the time, was told early in her pregnancy that her fetus had been damaged by medications that she had taken for amoebic dysentery; doctors "later told Pam that her placenta had detached from the uterine wall, a condition known as placental abruption, which can deprive the fetus of oxygen and nutrients. Doctors expected a stillbirth, Pam said, and they encouraged her to terminate the pregnancy."

She didn't, and she's happy about the choice she made.

The language of choice
What is interesting about stories of this kind is that they're told in the language of choice. That's key. Pam Tebow's doctor didn't force her to have an abortion; he advised her, and she made the choice. Nowhere in the discussion of her story has it been suggested that she wishes a fundamentalist pastor or a priest from the Vatican had made the choice for her. So why would she want to make that choice for a woman carrying twins with twin-to-twin syndrome, a woman who will lose both fetuses if one is not aborted? Why would she make it for a woman carrying a fetus with the chromosomal abnormality Trisomy 18, which has a 95 percent chance of dying in utero and if born alive, will suffer and likely die within a few months? Why would she want the birth of her healthy son to be used as a reason to deny infertile couples the chance to experience the same joy (since some embryos would be destroyed in achieving pregnancy)?

Folks who want to end all abortion avoid the complexities of problem pregnancies and instead, vacillate between threats/bullying and happy talk, while pushing the subject into every facet of American life. In deference to religion, society has allowed it, but that's a mistake. To paraphrase Gregg Doyel, whether for choice or against it, there are places the abortion issue doesn't belong — including the Super Bowl.

A writer and columnist from Fargo, N.D., Jane Ahlin also has taught English at Minnesota State University Moorhead.