The Alexander City Outlook

Pam Tebow speaks to a crowd at Alexander City’s First Baptist Church Tuesday night in an event sponsored by Sav-A-Life.

Pam Tebow brings pro-life message to area

From the moment Pam Tebow began speaking at Sav-A-Life of Tallapoosa County’s annual banquet Tuesday night, it was clear the mother of Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow was not there to talk about football.

Although the petite Tebow did begin her speech at First Baptist Church by saying she always has fun talking about football when she visits Alabama – and scanning the crowd for any Florida Gators fans – she was quick to explain her mission there was to encourage the pro-life message.

“It is fun to talk about football, but tonight we’re all on the same team,” Tebow told the packed sanctuary. “We all came for the same reason.”

As the world learned during the 2007 Heisman Trophy telecast, when her youngest son “Timmy” was awarded the Heisman following his sophomore season as quarterback at the University of Florida, Pam was faced with the choice of aborting Tim 23 years ago during a difficult pregnancy while she and her husband, Bob, were living as missionaries in the Philippines.

“I was told to have an abortion,” she said. “I already had four children. I had just been through a life-threatening case of amoebic dysentery and we lived in an area in the Philippines where medical care was very poor.”

Tebow said her pregnancy with Tim was difficult from the beginning, and she kept thinking she had lost him. She said she went to the only doctor in town, who told her ‘This isn’t a baby, it’s mass fetal tissue and if you don’t abort immediately, you’re going to die.’ But, she said, the family had already determined that they were going to trust God with the matter.

“I was able to fly to a hospital in Manila and give birth and my husband stood beside the doctor when Timmy entered the world and he said, ‘This is a miracle baby’ because only just a little fraction – a little thread of the placenta – was intact but it was enough to give that little boy all the nourishment that he needed, and we’re so grateful,” she said.

Tebow said following ESPN’s Heisman interview segment, she started getting more requests to share her testimony, yet she was hesitant to do so.

“I was a little nervous about that … but at the first women’s group that I spoke to after the Heisman Trophy cast, a young mother-to-be came up to me and she said, ‘Mrs. Tebow, I’m choosing to keep my baby because you did,’” she shared. “And I realized that God was giving me a new mission.”

Two years later, Focus on the Family approached the Tebow family about filming what became the most controversial ad of the 2009 Super Bowl.

“We thought it would be this sweet commercial that would tell how we felt about the pro-life ministry that would appear during the Super Bowl,” Tebow said. “Well, that isn’t what happened at all. By the time that CBS had taken away most of the wording, the message then was pretty vague, but the media and our opponents continued on giving the message, didn’t they?”

Tebow also shared other stories of faith and her family before Sharon Moore, executive director of Sav-A-Life, told attendees more about the organization’s mission of helping women through untimely pregnancies.

Moore estimated Wednesday that about 350 to 400 people attended the event, which raised about $14,000 for Sav-A-Life through money offerings and pledges. Moore also said it was great to have Tebow share her story.

“She was great to work with and she’s super sweet,” Moore said. “She seemed like she was really glad she was with us too, which isn’t something you always get from nationally-known speakers. And we had people who’ve never attended our events come out, so it was great to bring in a new group.”