By Vikram Srinivasan

For all the controversy over University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow’s decision to feature in a pro-life ad aired during the Super Bowl, there was at least one positive outcome.

It made the radically pro-choice left look indisputably silly. The hyperbolic nature of the episode revealed the deep frustration of the pro-choice lobby at the direction of the nation’s abortion debate.

What was noteworthy about the ad, which was made by conservative group Focus on the Family and showed Tebow playfully tackling his mother as she spoke vaguely about the decision to keep her dangerous pregnancy, was how little it actually said about abortion. In fact, the word “abortion” was never stated even once.

By contrast, what was noteworthy about the reaction to the ad, which began before the ad even aired, was its stridency and vitriol. Pro-choice groups practically threw the kitchen sink at Focus on the Family for daring to raise the issue of life, however obliquely, during the Super Bowl.

A few quotes are valuable for perspective:

Before the ad aired, Jehmu Greene, president of the Women’s Media Center said, “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.”

After it aired, the National Organization for Women alternately declared that the manner in which Tebow tackled his mother reflected an “undercurrent” of “violence against women.”

If only they were joking. The criticism is revelatory, if only of the paranoid psychology of its advocates.

The reaction to the Tebows’ ad from pro-choice groups seems to mask a deep sensitivity among these groups to having any kind of national debate about abortion at all. That the ad, mild as it was, sparked the outrage that it did before and after its airing, reflects the desperate need among pro-choice groups to not let pro-lifers get away with a public relations victory.

Considering the larger trends in the abortion debate and recent poll numbers on the subject, it’s not hard to see why.

A May 2009 Gallup poll send shockwaves through the political world for its revelation that for the first time, more Americans self-identified as “pro-life” than “pro-choice” by a substantial 51 to 42 percent margin.

The data set was not an outlier. Another poll conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in late December and early January 2010 showed that young people (voters aged 18-29) among the most pro-life, with 59 percent calling abortion “morally wrong.” The most pro-choice group seemed to be the Baby Boomers, aged 45 to 64, of which only 51 percent found abortion morally wrong.

The data on young-people has taken the pro-choice lobby particularly by surprise. Where attitudes among older populations are easier to dismiss as white noise from polling, the numbers on youth suggest a true generational shift. Nothing could be more alarming to abortion defenders who have lived the last forty years with a distinctive upper hand in the culture war.

Clearly, the momentum in the abortion debate has shifted towards pro-lifers. According to the popular narrative, the profusion of fetal imaging technologies and increased knowledge about embryonic development has heightened public sensitivity to the humanity of the unborn child. The narrative may well be true. The result is a pro-choice lobby that is bewildered, frustrated, and as we now know, neurotically hyper-sensitive.

One has to wonder what groups like NOW and Planned Parenthood are so afraid of.  That those who defend “choice” recoil at the prospect of a robust public conversation on abortion that could better inform the decisions of women considering the procedure seems contradictory, to say the least.

Resolution may come from the fact the “pro-choice” moniker is more a function of political convenience than ideological accuracy. “Choice,” as NOW, Planned Parenthood, and like-minded groups envision it, conveys entitlement, not deliberation.

Which is precisely why a national abortion debate is so horrifying to them. Pro-lifers might actually win.