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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:

Rebekah Spicuglia, Media Director
Women’s Media Center
(office) 212-563-0680; (cell) 415-290-2970
rebekah@womensmediacenter.com

Coalition of Progressive Organizations Demand CBS Pull Divisive Anti-Choice Super Bowl Ad

January 26, 2010 (New York, NY) – The Women’s Media Center and united organizations dedicated to reproductive rights, tolerance, and social justice have launched a campaign calling CBS to immediately pull an anti-choice advertisement sponsored by Focus on the Family to air during Super Bowl XLIV.

CBS has a well-documented history of prohibiting advocacy ads it deems controversial, rejecting ads from organizations such as PETA, MoveOn.org, United Church of Christ, and even ones that carry only an “implicit” endorsement for a side in a public debate. Last year, NBC made the prudent decision to not air anti-choice messages during the Super Bowl. CBS executives have indicated in the past that they would not air Super Bowl ads where “substantial elements of the community (are) in opposition to one another.”

Focus on the Family is an organization well-known for opposing the equality of Americans based on gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and reproductive freedom. This ad uses one story to subtly dictate morality to the American public, and encourages women to disregard medical advice, potentially putting their lives at risk. Abortion is a controversial issue and anti-abortion vitriol has resulted in escalated violence against reproductive health service providers and their patients.

“An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year – an event designed to bring Americans together regardless of background, faith, ideology or political affiliation,” says Jehmu Greene, President of the Women’s Media Center.

The ad goes against the approximately 70 percent majority American view that reproductive decisions should be left up to a woman and her physician; against the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that such decisions are protected by a constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy; and against the health needs of the 1 in 3 American women who will need an abortion at sometime in her life.

American values of privacy and freedom should be respected, not undermined during the Super Bowl. CBS must take action now, by canceling the airing of Focus on the Family’s anti-choice ad.

To speak with WMC President Jehmu Greene, or to book other experts on health reform, health care politics, or women’s reproductive rights, please contact Rebekah Spicuglia, (212) 563-0680, rebekah@womensmediacenter.com.

Coalition partners signed onto the letter to CBS include: Abortion Access Project, ACCESS/Women’s Health Rights Coalition, Women, Action & the Media, Advocates for Youth, Alternet, By Any Media Necessary, California Council of Churches IMPACT, CAMI project, Choice USA, Civil Liberties and Public Policy (CLPP)/Hampshire College, Equality Now, Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF), Feminist Press,

HollabackNYC, Ibis Reproductive Health, Law Students for Reproductive Justice, MAMAPALOOZA!, Media Equity Collaborative, Medical Students for Choice!, Ms. Foundation, New Prospect Family Praise and Worship Center, National Organization for Women (NOW), NOW-NYC, OpEd Project, Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, Religious Institute, RH Reality Check, Sisterhood is Global, Inc, The White House Project, Third Wave Foundation, Women, Action & the Media (WAM!), Women In Media & News, Women’s Information Network (WIN).

About the Women’s Media Center: The Women’s Media Center is a non-profit organization making women visible and powerful in the media. Its women’s health care campaign NotUnderTheBus.com is working to ensure that health care is fair, safe, and accessible to all.

Please visit WomensMediaCenter.com to learn more about our work.

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CBS Corporation
51 West 52nd Street
New York, NY 10019

January 27, 2010

Dear Leslie Moonves:

This letter is in response to the reported CBS decision to air an anti-choice advertisement during Super Bowl XLIV, sponsored by the controversial organization Focus on the Family. As united organizations dedicated to reproductive rights, tolerance, and social justice, we urge you to immediately cancel this ad and refuse any other advertisement promoting Focus on the Family’s agenda.

CBS has a well-documented history of prohibiting advocacy ads it deems controversial, rejecting ads from organizations such as PETA, MoveOn.org, United Church of Christ, and even ones that carry only an “implicit” endorsement for a side in a public debate. Last year, NBC made the prudent decision to not air anti-choice messages during the Super Bowl. CBS executives have indicated in the past that they would not air Super Bowl ads where “substantial elements of the community (are) in opposition to one another.” Abortion is a controversial issue and anti-abortion vitriol has resulted in escalated violence against reproductive health service providers and their patients, including the murder of Dr. George Tiller during Sunday morning service at his church. We sincerely hope you do not want CBS associated with this brand of un-American hate.

Focus on the Family has waged war on non-traditional families, tried its hand at race baiting during the 2008 election, and is now attempting to use the Super Bowl to further ramp up the vitriolic rhetoric surrounding reproductive rights. By offering one of the most coveted advertising spots of the year to an anti-equality, anti-choice, homophobic organization, CBS is aligning itself with a political stance that will alienate viewers and discourage consumers from supporting its shows and advertisers. The decision to air this ad would be ethically, economically and politically disastrous for CBS. The content of this ad endangers women’s health, uses sports to divide rather than to unite, and promotes an organization that opposes the equality of Americans based on gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and reproductive freedom. Focus on the Family’s ad is surrealistic in its argument that a woman who chooses not to have a child may be depriving the Super Bowl of a football player. It uses one family’s story to dictate morality to the American public, and encourages young women to disregard medical advice, putting their lives at risk.

The Super Bowl is an entertainment event that brings people together regardless of background, faith, ideology or political affiliation. Focus on the Family’s ad goes against the approximately 70% majority American view that reproductive decisions should be left up to a woman and her physician; against the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that such decisions are protected by a constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy; and against the health needs of the 1 in 3 American women who will need an abortion at some time in her life.

Though women comprise only 9% of CBS’s board, they are a key constituency for the CBS network and 40% of Super Bowl viewers. If you contradict your policy and air this ad, you will be throwing these women under the bus. American values of privacy and freedom should be respected, not undermined during the Super Bowl. The last thing Americans need is CBS or its advertisers telling us how and when to have a family. CBS must take action now, by cancelling the airing of Focus on the Family’s ad.

Signed,

Abortion Access Project
ACCESS/Women’s Health Rights Coalition, Women, Action & the Media
Advocates for Youth
Alternet
By Any Media Necessary
California Council of Churches IMPACT
CAMI project
Choice USA
Civil Liberties and Public Policy (CLPP)/Hampshire College
Equality Now
Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF)
Feminist Press
HollabackNYC
Ibis Reproductive Health
Law Students for Reproductive Justice
MAMAPALOOZA!
Media Equity Collaborative
Medical Students for Choice!
Ms. Foundation
New Prospect Family Praise and Worship Center
National Organization for Women (NOW)
NOW-NYC
OpEd Project
Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health
Religious Institute
RH Reality Check
Sisterhood is Global, Inc
The White House Project
Third Wave Foundation
Women, Action & the Media (WAM!)
Women In Media & News
Women’s Information Network (WIN)
Women’s Media Center

Women’s health means rightwing stealth. At the last minute, the Stupak/Pitts Amendment was attached to the Health Care Reform Bill. This amendment violates the underlying principle of health care reform, as articulated by President Obama, that “no one will lose the benefits they currently have.” Truth is that under the Stupak/Pitts Amendment, millions of women would lose benefits they already have and millions more would be prohibited from getting the kind of private sector health care coverage that most women have today. Ie: millions of women would lose private coverage for abortion services and millions more would be prohibited from buying it even with their own money.

People are often surprised that we are still fighting this battle for freedom of choice after so long. I’m not. I’ve come to understand that anti-choice and opposition to contraception has nothing to do with pro-life or pro-fetus; it has everything to do with power and who has it. It represents a mindset that values women mainly for their services as wives and sexual partners to men and as producers and rearers of children.

Reproduction and sexuality are keys to women’s empowerment. If a woman is able to determine the reproductive and sexual aspects of her life, it means she can also control and determine many other aspects of her life. When women are robbed of reproductive health and contraceptive decision-making, they loose an essential element of what it means to be a full human being.

This is a power struggle that has existed from the very beginning of the 120-year fight over reproductive rights. Every dictator—Stalin, Ceaucescu, Hilter—has made anti-choice a central component of their agenda. The anti-choice movement has used different strategies over the decades, growing more strategic and virulent in reaction to the modern U.S. women’s movement. Granting personhood to the fetus is only the latest incarnation and now the Stupak/Pitts Amendment shows how clever the movement has become. Most folks blame the Bishops without realizing the most pernicious part of it all.

Reproductive health has to be understood from a woman’s point of view. How a woman manages her fertility comprises a whole spectrum of factors — her relations, sexual and otherwise with her partner; her economic and psychological circumstances; her status within the family and in the community; her future security. Health factors are only one among all these others and since childbearing and child rearing is a complex social and economic undertaking that affects a woman’s economic, social, sexual, and emotional life, and the life of her family and her community, this undertaking cannot be decided by a medical doctor who is weighing it from the point of view of health risks, or of policy-makers who may view it subjectively as a moral issue. This makes the woman an “object” and it dismisses her knowledge about her own body and her own life and instead of enhancing her dignity and self-respect it belittles and disempowers her.

It reflects a mindset that believes that women cannot be trusted to make decisions that will be good for their families and society; that what is good for a family and a community and a society or even a woman’s own health is something that must be determined by others who “know better” and then imposed on her.

The strategy of the anti-choice forces today is not to oppose abortion frontally but, instead, to wage an incremental assault in a long-term effort to win the hearts and minds of the American public. The Stupak/Pitts amendment is a good example.

Let’s not let this pass.

Woke up with a cold. All those people coughing on the plane. Slept with the grandkids. Hope I didn’t give it to them. I was supposed to go to my stepchildren’s home for dinner tonight. By that I mean Laura Turner and Rutherford Seydel and two of their three children. I still feel we are part of the same family. Their son, whose birth I filmed, is a major hockey goalie and so went to finish high school in Toronto where hockey rules. I’m so proud of him. He is an amazing human being.

I just took this picture shooting up into the overhead mirror while lying in bed. That is my granddaughter scratching Tulea’s tummy. Sometime I’ll photograph the bed and post it. I’m a fool for unusual beds and this is definitely the most unusual, one of a kind, canopied, mirrored one I’ve ever seen. Richard hasn’t seen it either. My bed at my ranch is pretty unusual as well. (Come to think of it, I have a picture of that one and will post it now). The problem is I got them when I was solo and they’re antique so not very big. If Richard and I are still together in a year I’ve promised to get a king-sized one as he’s 6’3.”

Shucks. I erased the photo of my ranch bed so I’m sending this one, a bed that is outside on the portale. My favorite napping place (and sometimes overnight place) cause I can hear the river close by and see the stars.

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The fight in the House is over, but the fight in the Senate is just beginning. It’s time to use our strongest weapon: the White House.

Join us. Ask President Obama to live up to his campaign commitment and stand with us to protect women’s health care today and every single day until reform is passed.

Click here for more information and to contact President Obama

Dear Jane,

Yesterday was brutal.

While there are some who are satisfied with the health care reform bill that passed in the House of Representatives late Saturday night, I am not one of them.

When it came down to it, Congress passed a bill that will undercut women’s access to comprehensive health care. Despite hundreds of thousands of voters like you and me who called on members of Congress to include women’s health care in health care reform, the bill that passed Saturday night includes a ban on private abortion coverage for millions of women and would prohibit it in the new “public option.”

At Planned Parenthood, we fought together with you until the bitter end (thank you), and once we lost the vote on women’s health, we started to do what we do best — gear up for our next fight.

http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/hcr09bse_afw?qp_source=hcr09bse_afhp

Opponents of legal abortion and health care for women are emboldened by Saturday night’s vote and ready to bring their ban on abortion to the Senate floor. But now it’s our turn. And this time we are going to use our strongest weapon: the White House.

That’s why, today, we are calling on President Obama
http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/hcr09bse_afw?qp_source=hcr09bse_afhp
to ensure that lawmakers, especially those in his own party, support health care reform that protects women’s access to reproductive care as the next round of debate and voting occurs in the Senate.

Please, join us by asking our president to stand with us to protect women’s health care today and every single day until reform is passed.
http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/hcr09bse_afw?qp_source=hcr09bse_afhp

President Obama campaigned on a promise to put reproductive health care at the center of his reform plan. Supporters of women’s health voted for him and contributed to his campaign in record numbers — and now it’s time for the president to reaffirm his commitment to women’s health, and demand that Congress reject any bill that leaves women worse off under health care reform than they are today. Take a moment right now to tell President Obama that we need him to stand with us — in both his words and in his actions.
http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/hcr09bse_afw?qp_source=hcr09bse_afhp

If there’s anything we learned yesterday, it’s that women’s health is being targeted as expendable in health care reform. We also saw that anti-choice forces are working round-the-clock to roll back women’s health benefits. We will each need to take action many times over the next few weeks, and we need strong and public support from the White House to help us.

I’ve said this before, and it deserves repeating: without access to abortion care, and to comprehensive reproductive health care, there is no choice. Please, take action now http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/hcr09bse_afw?qp_source=hcr09bse_afhp
 — and then spread the word on Facebook, among your friends and colleagues, via e-mail — whatever it takes.

Thank you so very much for standing with us and the women, men, and teens who rely on Planned Parenthood.

Sincerely,

Cecile Richards, President
Planned Parenthood Federation of America