A newly formed group has made their debut on the state political scene with an ad urging voters to reject the "Tennessee Taliban Amendment." You may know it as Amendment 1, a proposed constitutional amendment that would give the state legislature more power to regulate abortions.

The portion of the ad seen above has been getting most of the attention for obvious reasons — it invokes the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, equating Tennessee's abortion-related amendment with their often brutal treatment of women, and includes what is intended to be a caricature of a radical Muslim man. The finishing touch for the full-fear affect is that white woman under his foot, standing in for "Tennessee Women." You can see the full text of the ad, which appeared in several papers around the state, at the bottom of this post.

The ad started getting attention on Twitter when Remziya Suleyman, director of policy for the American Center for Outreach, posted about it this morning calling the accompanying cartoon "racist and bigoted" and later adding "there's no damn Taliban in TN. Sick."

The organization behind the ad, Tennesseans for Preservation of Personal Privacy is registered with the state as a non-profit. They are not, however, registered as a referendum committee, like other groups spending money to support or oppose upcoming ballot initiatives. The group's treasurer and attorney, Barbara Moss, tells Pith she can't disclose the names of the people behind the group but that it's "a group of independent Republicans and Democrats" who "believe in informing Tennessee's women about this amendment because we think it's such a bad idea."

She cites the new Vanderbilt University poll that showed overwhelming opposition to the amendment.

"We think that we need to get people educated about this amendment," Moss says. "Nobody is in favor of abortion. But we are pro-choice because we think that the legislature shouldn't be telling the parents of a fourteen year old who's 10-weeks pregnant what to do. We don't think that the government should be telling a woman who's 11-weeks pregnant with a severely deformed fetus what to do."

According to the state's records, the group was formed in April and Moss insists that they're not taking any money from outside the state.

So what about the Taliban?

"The people that formed this group felt like it was an attempt to control the bodies of women," Moss says. "So that's where they came from with the Taliban part of it."

And the cartoon? Moss demurs, and says that while the Tennessean ran the ad without the cartoon, other papers included it.

"I can say this," she says. "Before I would sign off on it, I contacted a dear friend of mine who's a Muslim to ask her if she would be offended and she said no."

Suleyman, and other men and women whom she's been retweeting throughout the day, feel differently.

"For anyone to compare the Tennessee legislature to the Taliban is absolutely absurd," Suleyman tells Pith. "You might not like our legislature, you might not like the legislation they pass and the issues that they deal with. But comparing them to the Taliban? That's absolute nonsense."

As for the cartoon, she says it equates men in turbans with violence against women. And that's not just a problem because the caricature conflates all Muslim men with Taliban members, she says, but because it does that to all varieties of Middle Eastern men, be they Muslim or not, by using an ignorant stereotype.

"That could be a Christian man," she says. "Anybody who's been to the Middle East — Arab culture, Middle Eastern culture, everyone wears a turban. For goodness' sake, I mean the Sikh community wears turbans. So, I think for me it's that the image itself is depicting men, whether you're Muslim, Sikh, Christian, any man in a turban is equated with violence against women."

Here's the full ad:

Steve Cavendish contributed to this post.