Sarah Palin and Bristol are not hypocrites on abstinence, get over it

Just to clear things up, this headline from Salon is lying to you. Ever since Bristol Palin announced her second out-of-wedlock pregnancy last year (daughter Sailor was born December 23rd), spiteful libs have been compulsively sneering that Bristol is an "abstinence mascot," and that she and mother Sarah Palin are hypocrites, because...well, they won't say why. They keep bringing up Bristol's past position as a spokeswoman for the Candie's foundation, subtly suggesting that this group an advocacy group for abstinence.

This is false. The Candie's foundation is a teen pregnancy nonprofit. Even people who support comprehensive sex ed and access to birth control can agree that teenage girls should avoid getting pregnant. The cards are stacked against teen mothers and their children; only about 1% go on to graduate from college. And if encouraging teens to postpone sex helps them avoid this situation, so be it.

Yes, I said "postpone." Can people learn the difference between people who think kids shouldn't be having sex and people who believe nobody should do much of anything before the wedding night? Liberals believe anyone who looks askance at the thought of 13-year-olds being handed a birth control packet and told to go ahead and have "safe sex" belongs in the second group. Actually, no. One position is a radical idea embraced by religious radicals of all stripes, including fundamentalist Christians like the Duggar family and, yes, Muslims. This group even opposes dating, believing future spouses should "court" under strict parental supervision. Fundamentalist parents will even brag about how their kids saved the first kiss for the wedding night, which is absurd. These people don't even know each other. Some end up in marriages like Josh and Anna Duggar's. (Although fundies will always insist their marriages couldn't be any more wonderful--and so much better than yours!--it appears many are just saying that, either because their beliefs are all they know, or they have to justify them somehow. Later on, many will admit their wedding nights were traumatic. I imagine it's hard for two people with zero sexual experience to go from kissing to intercourse in a matter of hours.)

The other position is a perfectly reasonable one backed up by the facts: nothing good comes from kids having sex too early. Young girls are more susceptible to STDs than mature women. They don’t include information about the cervical transformation zone (or T-Zone), a ring of cells that is vulnerable to infection. The transformation zone is dramatically larger in a teenage girl, but it shrinks as she gets older. Isn't that reason enough to wait five more years? Liberals reply that they can use condoms and be taught responsibility. But on a strictly neurological level, kids are not really able to make a mature decision to have sex. In adolescents, the areas of the brain responsible for impulse control and accurate risk assessment are not fully developed – and won’t be until their 20s. Adults acknowledge this medical fact when debating other issues affecting kids. For example, teens’ limited capacity for risk assessment is often cited as the reason not to let them drive until age 16 or drink until age 21. If we think high school seniors are too immature to have a beer, why do we think eighth-graders are able to understand the risks of sexual activity, let alone use condoms and birth control reliably?

Not to mention that even the liberal, pro-contraception Guttmacher Institute found a link between early sexual activity and sexual violence, including rape.  It seems a lot of those 14-year-olds being handed pill packs and told to have fun aren't really consenting.

In any case, the kids themselves have spoken: 78 percent of all teenage respondents believed that teens shouldn’t have sex at all. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 72 percent of girls and 55 percent of boys say they wish they had waited longer to have sex. 

Back to the Palin family. This Salon headline sneers about "Palin Family Values," as if they've ever portrayed themselves as a group of squeaky-clean Christians with well-behaved children who save it for the wedding night, much like the Duggars. (Who, as we now know, aren't as wholesome as we've been lead to believe.) When have they ever done that?

I've always admired the Palins' unapologetic attitude about the fact that they're not perfect: the Down's syndrome child, teen pregnancies, and rowdy hillbilly behavior. This is not a Stepford family. People pretending to be pure as the driven snow don't cause a ruckus at a white trash bash in Alaska. I use that term affectionately, by the way. You know the old question about which candidate you'd rather have a beer with? The Palins are a rowdy bunch of country people that I would like to party with. So would a lot of other Americans, which is exactly why so many "average Joes" and blue-collar conservatives loved Sarah Palin. If you're looking for a wholesome family with straight-laced kids and a beautiful, classy, conservatively dressed 1950s housewife type who quit her job to support her man, you'll have to look to these people.

That said, I find it annoying that Bristol jokes about "burning welfare checks" when she's a 25-year-old with two kids by two different guys, at least one of whom is a complete loser. (And the second guy isn't looking too good either.) Does she know how the Republican Party treats 99.9% of women in that situation?  The daughter of a former governor and vice presidential candidate who has sold millions of books will always have a roof over her head, food to eat, and insurance to cover her children's doctor appointments. But most 25-year-old, never-married mothers who started having babies at 18 have two options: the welfare office or the abortion clinic. If I were in office, I would only vote to ban abortion if there's an agreement that we'll just have to pay for it: Medicaid to cover the birth, housing assistance, etc, and if people whine about personal responsibility or government spending, tough shit. Abortion would be the "responsible" option if our main priority is everyone paying their own way. Abortion is most common among low-income black women who already have a child. Do Republicans ever wonder if these women agree with them, and that the stereotypical ghetto mother who keeps having babies she can't afford is exactly who they want to avoid becoming?

You can't have it both ways. I take personal offense to the idea that these women should just "pull themselves up by the bootstraps." Bristol Palin doesn't have to, so she can say that. In the future, I hope she finds a new activist position and speaks out about how hard it is for women in her position to keep and raise their babies.

As for her new legal battle with babydaddy #2, I think she can hold her own. I have a feeling that behind closed doors, Sarah and Bristol are exactly like the woman in Austin Webb's music video for "All Country on You." Why do you think Todd Palin always has that nervous look on his face?