DURHAM, N.C. - A pro-life, Focus on the Family advertisement running during this weekend's Super Bowl is off-message and glosses over the realities of parenting, says a Duke University theologian and an expert on theological and biomedical ethics.

"The advertisement's tacit argument is that a woman shouldn't abort because her fetus -- if brought to term -- could grow up to be a wonderful, well-mannered, and stunningly successful boy like Tim Tebow," says Amy Laura Hall, associate professor of Christian ethics at Duke Divinity School. "The basic gist is clear: save your pregnancy, wager for life, and you too might win the grand prize of proud motherhood."

Hall, author of Conceiving Parenthood: The Protestant Spirit of Biotechnological Reproduction (Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007), says the advertisement's message of carefully wrought success conflicts with the diverse realities of parenting, and may even undermine efforts by groups like Focus on the Family to encourage foster care and adoption for children with special needs.

"Truth in advertising would demand a messier picture. It might have looked like a woman finding out that her baby could be born with cognitive disabilities and signing on," Hall says. "A truthful snippet on mothering would have been smaller scale, and more raw. Touting life by way of a super success story seems, at the very least, silly. It may even be cruel."