By Dave Andrusko

Part Two discusses ESPN's look at Rae Carruth. Part Three looks at the behind-the-scenes pro-abortion strategy to salvage health care "reform." Please send your comments on any or all parts to daveandrusko@gmail.com.  If you'd like, follow me on http://twitter.com/daveha.

Sometimes when you support abortion for any reason or no reason, you really can paint yourself into a corner--and in the process confirm the worse suspicions non-partisans already have of you. Take the hysterically over-the-top response by some of the usual suspects to CBS's decision to air a commercial during the Super Bowl that features Heisman Trophy Winner Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam Tebow.

Tim Tebow greets Boomer Hornbeck, 7, of Atlanta after the Allstate Sugar Bowl Classic held earlier this year.

It is, of course, fair to anticipate that the 30-second spot will have a life-affirming message. As almost everyone knows by now (the beauty of the furor), 23 years ago while a missionary in the Philippines a pregnant Pam Tebow contracted amoebic dysentery, a bacteria transmitted through contaminated drinking water. Doctors told her that the strong medications she'd need to take could cause irreversible damage to Tim (or cause him to be stillborn)--and counseled an abortion.

Pam said no, telling the Gainesville Sun it was because of her faith. She spent the last two months of her pregnancy on bed rest, ultimately giving birth in August 1987 to a healthy baby boy, "skinny, but rather long."

But to label the half-minute spot celebrating this profile in courage as "hate masquerading as love," as did Erin Matson, the National Organization for Women's new vice president, can only serve to remind Joe and Jill Average Citizen just how far out to sea these people actually are.

So, as was utterly predictable, pro-abortionists are calling a series of audibles--changes from the original play call.

Yesterday, the Washington Post ran an interesting op-ed by a tag-team of "formers"-- Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for Choice, and Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL.

There are many rhetorical swirls and eddies in this 1,489-word-long piece, too many to address comprehensively.

Let me take note of three.

Kissling/Michelman counsel the sisterhood to exercise restraint. Matson's comment "may play well in the choice choir," they write, "but to others, it makes no sense, at best; at worst, it's seen as the kind of stridency that reinforces the view that pro-choice simply means pro-abortion." (Listening to the better angels of my nature, I'll resist the temptation to comment on this duo criticizing anyone for "stridency.") Let's assume at some level they actually mean this.

Second, their primary objective in "What Tim Tebow's Super Bowl ad can teach the pro-choice movement" appears to be to advise their pro-abortion colleagues to take a page out of the pro-life playbook--and to announce from on high who are acceptable pro-lifers and who are not.

They bash a 1989 video that featured members of the New York Football Giants and "its extreme antiabortion language" which Kissling/Michelman say "contrasts sharply with the warm and fuzzy -- and even inspirational -- message of the Tebow ad."

They are free, of course, to evaluate the comparative merits (even if they haven't seen the Tebow spot). Where they go wrong is where abortion advocates habitually run off the road.

They express a kind of backhanded admiration for pro-life outreach to college women. "In the public eye, the term [pro-life] seems to encompass a broader and more moderate vision, not focused solely on what it opposes," they write.

Well, yes and no. Yes, the public rightly admires a Movement that offers affirmative alternates to help women avoid a disastrously wrong decision. But, no, an outreach of love and support to pregnant young women was not recently minted; it has always been the case from the Pro-Life Movement's origins.

To take just one example, NRLC affiliates routinely help to pass "Choose Life" license plates. A percentage of the fee paid for these specialty plates often goes to crisis pregnancy centers.

Individuals within these local groups also offer housing, baby sitting, and meals. In addition they help these women obtain their GEDs. In a word we love both mother and child and have from the beginning.

NRLC, the flagship of the Movement, proudly believes in changing the culture through many venues including pro-life education and legislation.

Third, why is restraint needed? Why is going to DEFCON 1 over a "warm and fuzzy" spot that centers on the theme "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life" really counterproductive?

Because there really has been "a dramatic shift in attitudes toward 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice,'" as they put it. While they give the Movement minimal to no credit for this, it is to their credit that they list some of the other important factors that explain the turnaround. (Come to think of it, I was unfair: they do grasp the significance of the "Life, What a Beautiful Choice" campaign the DeMoss Foundation ran.)

That includes everything from ultrasounds to the educational impact of the long, long debate over partial-birth abortion which became a nation-wide debate because of NRLC.

This is all by way of preface to Kissling/Michelman's concluding advice. Turn the Tebow ad against pro-lifers. Pam Tebow exercised her choice--Life--so make your own ads showing women some of whom choose to give life, others who gave their babies up for adoption, and, oh, by the way, some of whom aborted.

It's just an update of the threadbare logic that never gets old (or gets any better) undergirding the "Who Decides?" campaign that flourished for a while before crumbling under the weight of its own illogic.

"Choosing" is not the morally relevant element, it is what is chosen. You see a bank. You can (a) make a deposit, (b) transfer your account out of that bank to another facility, or (C) rob the place. It is phony baloney to pretend that the ability to "choose" from among the options renders the choices morally and ethically interchangeable.

(The New York Times yesterday also argued for this attempt at political ju-jitsu. It editorialized, "Instead of trying to silence an opponent, advocates for allowing women to make their own decisions about whether to have a child should be using the Super Bowl spotlight to convey what their movement is all about: protecting the right of women like Pam Tebow to make their private reproductive choices.")

As far as anyone can tell, CBS is standing tall. My guess is they understood from the get-go that the Tebow ad was unassailable and anticipated that after a bit the pro-abortion side would see that its go-for-the-throat reaction was boomeranging.

I can't wait to see what may be the most anticipated spot in the history of the Super Bowl.