Getting pregnant at 17 will complete you, girls, so don’t do it!

Also sex is a filthy disgusting and degrading thing that you should save for someone you really love.

Although Bristol did nothing wrong per se in getting pregnant, her own pregnancy simply proves that the politics of her parents (or any other) are irrelevant as to the decisions that kids make (“Birth control? We don’t need it”) in the backseats of cars at age 17.

However, I do agree with others who feel that during this past election year had one of Obama’s daughters been in her teen years and gotten pregnant, the right and their media lackeys (e.g. Hannity) would have howled at their father’s awful family values, when in the case of the Palin family, they made bashful excuses and changed the subject.

Yet if anything, considering how teen or unwed pregnancy was treated as a terrible secret in previous generations (and single mothers as pariahs), Bristol is far better off today than those moms.

Making lemonade isn’t the same thing as saying everyone should start a lemon orchard. Bristol is pretty clearly saying that her situation isn’t perfect, and that teenagers as a rule should avoid pregnancy, but that - fortunately - she has support and love in her life and she will make the best of it, and she loves her baby.

This should be a call for better education, so everyone has the freedom to have a baby when they choose to (if you choose never, that’s still a choice).

“her own pregnancy simply proves that the politics of her parents (or any other) are irrelevant “

How, exactly?  I’m not seeing it, myself.

” he’ll tattoo your name on his finger”

Wow!!!!  I’m super-impressed!  I guess they’ll be together forever now, huh?  Because nothing is the opposite of shallow and superficial like a tattoo! !! !

“Yet if anything, considering how teen or unwed pregnancy was treated as a terrible secret in previous generations”

Actually, Bristol Palin and her fiance’s situation was pretty standard for much of history.  Many young couples started off married life with “a bun in the oven” - known or unknown.  Even Todd & Sarah’s oldest was born less than 9 months after their wedding.

This is what happens when your ideology conflicts with itself. Bristol is required to decry sex as evil and foolish, but under no circumstances may she disparage pregnancy/motherhood, despite the fact that the first is necessary to the second.

I always look forward to the moment when the most loud-mouthed advocates of “traditional Christian parenting” (Palin, Spears) has to admit to the public that their teenager is knocked up. It’s almost as good as when homophobes like Craig and Haggard get caught looking for a little down low action.

I feel sorry for the kids, though. Especially when their parents continue to use them in the service of their cause…

Bristol is pretty clearly saying that her situation isn’t perfect, and that teenagers as a rule should avoid pregnancy, but that - fortunately - she has support and love in her life and she will make the best of it, and she loves her baby.

It’s a mixed message. Bristol’s good fortune is that she has fairly wealthy parents, and that there’s likely a little quid pro quo from the RNC for Bristol and her dopey shotgun husband appearing as campaign props.

Amanda, I think you’re forgetting something - had her parents’ lessons on birth control made such an impact with Bristol then why did she have sex with her boyfriend?

After all, isn’t abstinence the most effective form of birth control?

I guess my point is that if Bristol clearly ignored the advice her parents gave her on having sex out of marriage that any similar lessons on birth control (not that we know what was discussed in those conversations; none of us were there) were as quickly dismissed when she decided to get busy with Levi.

To a right winger, it’s only a tragic event if an abortion allows for a lesser punishment for the pregnant teen.

Teenagers,

Pump yourself up with steroids (BC), have abortions, pierce your tongue, falsely accuse innocent men of rape, dress in black, get tatoos, dye your hair funny colors, worship the devil, reject the church, use flavored condoms, but for liberal’s sake, do not have a baby.  ..and then, you will be a joyful and happy person like feminists are!

Bristol is required to decry sex as evil and foolish, but under no circumstances may she disparage pregnancy/motherhood, despite the fact that the first is necessary to the second.

Seriously.  Motherhood is as American as baseball and apple pie but shame on you for getting in that condition, you slut.

Amanda, I’m afraid I don’t see - as kids are going to do what they’re going to do, no matter who is dispensing the sex advice.

And after that’s happened (e.g. a teen pregnancy), who cares what the hell abstinence backers have to say either way?

The horse has already left the proverbial barn.

I suppose I understand your point.

In any case, Bristol is hardly the first teen mom to come down the pike, and she will not be the last - which, of course, then raises a racial component to what we’re discussing.

When well-off white kids get pregnant, it is seemingly something to be cherished. Yet if the mother in question is black or Hispanic, then (in the eyes of many in society) they are irresponsible welfare gougers.

When people sleep around and find the right partner, men with wives that are not happy (patriarchs) realize that the circumstances that led to their own selfish happiness may not be possible for their male offspring.  They’re also obviously jealous that they didn’t get to sleep around either. 

Men are also innately paranoid about passing on their genetic material - it isn’t anything any man can escape, it is only logical.  Any woman can get pregnant (well, in theory, disregard fertility issues) and she instantly knows that she’s passed on her genetic material.  Males don’t have this luxury without complete trust or control of someone else’s womb.  Enlightened people in 2009 know that the world is overpopulated and that passing on genetic material should be the least of our worries.

Apologies, Amanda - but after re-reading your seat belt analogy above, it doesn’t work at all in this framework we’re discussing.

After all, if a teen driver refuses to wear a belt it could mean that person’s death in an accident, which is a far cry from the possible outcome of not using birth control (e.g. a bouncing new baby).

Isn’t your comparison just apples and oranges?

Nope, both a terrible accident and a baby at 16 are both negative life changing events.

After all, if a teen driver refuses to wear a belt it could mean that person’s death in an accident, which is a far cry from the possible outcome of not using birth control (e.g. a bouncing new baby).

Not in a world where AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases exist.  A baby’s not the only thing you can get from unprotected sex.

>>>Not in a world where AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases exist.  A baby’s not the only thing you can get from unprotected sex.

Yes, agreed.

Hey! I really like James. IMO 5-0, Space and Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) are amazing songs. Their new album is really good too.

Sorry. Lame Brit-Pop reference.

In any case, I strongly feel that the whole abstinence only thing is all about setting people up to fail. In fact, if you look at the whole Christian Right movement, as a whole it’s all about making sure that people fail. If people fail, then the whole redemption via mere belief concept is a lot easier of a sell.

On the other side, it’s why they have nothing to say about much more damaging activities that actually require power to accomplish. A little bit of win in not ripping off old folks for millions of dollars could counteract the fail of actually having a bit of intimate fun before you’re married. Oh Noes!

It’s a pity about James. I was really looking forward to seeing his wingnut justification for putting Manic Panic on the same level as filing a false police report.

“Teenagers need to prevent pregnancy to begin with—this isn’t ideal. But I’m fortunate to have a supportive family which is dealing with this together. Tripp is so perfectly precious; we love him with all our hearts. I can’t imagine life without him now.”

We’re all focusing on the mother when the Bristol’s statement deserves a little more attention focused on it.  She didn’t just say teen pregnancy isn’t ideal, she said teens needs to prevent pregnancy to begin with - tell me, where in the statements of Bristol or Sarah Palin did either one address where Bristol and Levi could have done a better job preventing teen pregnancy?  To my knowledge Bristol did not go on to say, “you know, we’re young, we haven’t even finished HS and can’t support ourselves. . .on second thought we shouldn’t have been engaging in sexual activities”  or even, “we shouldn’t have but since we did any way, we should have used some protection”  What Bristol didn’t say is as telling & meaningful as what she did say as such she is as much the problem as the rest of the religious wingnuts.

Bye, James.

Bunnies?

James, I agree with you that teenagers should be encouraged to reject the church.

Maybe we could have a class in high school that shoves that encouragement down their throats! Oh wait, we don’t have that, because only religious prudes are so insecure about their message they feel the need to do that.

I found this part relevant tho I am sure you know as much already, but I like to provide a source for my opinions. Because the right enjoys attacking us without sourcing any relevant informational facts.
——————————————————————

Babies born to teenagers are at risk for neglect and abuse because their young mothers are uncertain about their roles and may be frustrated by the constant demands of caretaking. Adult parents can help prevent teenage pregnancy through open communication and by providing guidance to their children about sexuality, contraception, and the risks and responsibilities of intimate relationships and pregnancy. Some teenage girls drop out of school to have their babies and don’t return. In this way, pregnant teens lose the opportunity to learn skills necessary for employment and self-survival as adults. School classes in family life and sexual education, as well as clinics providing reproductive information and birth control to young people, can also help to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.
http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/when_children_have_children

I heard Bristol was going to name the baby Crystal if it was a girl and Meth if it was a boy.

Also, notice how a teenager is able to make an admittedly “not ideal” decision about her pregnancy and, what do you know, there are no calls for government intervention, parental consent, nor any ominous warnings of a destroyed future because of a less than ideal repro choice.

Aw, I kind of enjoy James.  His posts simply drip with jealousy of the exciting, sexy, sinful, fun fun fun lives he imagines liberal women lead.  I like the trolls who make me feel like a libertine for voting Democrat and taking the Pill, because in reality I’m a boring old married lady.  Hell, I’ve barely had as many partners in my entire life as the average promise-ringer has by high-school graduation.

“After all, isn’t abstinence the most effective form of birth control?”

It would be, if abastinence education worked.  Which it doesn’t.  There’s been like a dozen studies in just the past year alone.

While I accept your overall premise about right-wing, pro-“abstinence” types, I have a problem with everyone overly parsing Bristol’s statement. What, exactly, is she supposed to say? She’s a very prominent, but also very young person, dealing with a difficult situation. She cannot say it’s a good thing, but she also cannot express anything other than love for her baby or she will be attacked for that as well. We’re talking about a canned statement for public consumption. You want her to describe exactly how she got pregnant? You want her to say “This is the shittiest thing that ever happened to me”? You want her to publicly attack her mother? What, exactly, would people like her to say?

“Teenagers, get tatoos, and then, you will be a joyful and happy person like feminists are!”

“Levi Johnston’s Tattoo: “Bristol” On Ring Finger (PHOTOS)”

James is a sharp one, isn’t he?

” What, exactly, would people like her to say?”

I don’t particularly care what she says, but if she is going to say “I discourage teen pregnancy” in one breath, she really shouldn’t say “my teen pregnancy is so wonderful!” in the next.

I think she’s being honest that her situation is not necessarily the norm. She has a lot more financial and family support than a lot of teen parents do.

>>>It would be, if abstinence education worked.  Which it doesn’t.  There’s been like a dozen studies in just the past year alone.

You’re preaching to the choir on that one.

While I don’t believe that sexual urges give people an excuse to screw anything in sight, what I think we call agree on is that no one is a saint when it comes to sexual conduct, and anyone (or group) who claims otherwise is a liar - decades (if not centuries) of priest-child molestation cases being proof in addition to the David Vitter’s of the world who preach sexual purity one day, and are busted with a two-dollar hooker the next.

Notorious, I picked up on that, too. We mocked Levi’s tattoo ‘proof of love’, and James mocks us as pro-tattoo (which we are in the sense of let people do what they want to with their bodies, but we’re not pushing them on people, either).

Tripp? Tell me the baby isn’t named for Linda Tripp, please.

Caren: “Sex is fun, but I also think it’s a grown-up activity and most teens are probably better waiting till they’re ready.  There is a time and place for everything, and it’s called ‘college’.”

Caren, the enemies of sex ed have made the kinds of conversations you’re talking about impossible, unless a teenager is lucky enough to have parents with a healthy and rational perspective on sex, which is a rare phenomenon. So as religion loons mainstream abstinence-only education and hypocritical sexual norms, the prevailing view for prudish and embarrassed parents is this: “Sex isn’t really appropriate for teens anyway, so let’s just see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. Then they go to college. And fingers crossed that they do it safely and know everything we were too much of blushing puritans to tell them!”

What a crock. Teens who want to have sex should be encouraged to have it safely and on egalitarian terms. Anything less is sending the message that these urges are somehow wrong and dirty. And that message, often warped as it is by notions of female purity and manly prowess in conquest, usually cuts agains all women and gay men.

I think its remarkable how sucessfully Palin and her crowd have confused the issue.  In the abstract—that is,when its not their family shame—the act of teens having sex at all is considered shameful, sinful, and even worthy of damnation. Having sex before marriage is *definitionally sinful* whether or not your get pregnant. Sure, getting an abortion compounds the sin, theologically speaking, because abortion itself is thought to be a sin. But only *getting married* and admitting that premarital sex was wrong is the only way of washing away the social sin. Bristol and Levi never got married. Promising to get married at some future date doesn’t cut it. Getting married pro forma and then getting divorced doesnt’ cut it. 

Now, I love babies and I, personally, agree completely with Bristol that once you’ve got a baby you “can’t imagine life without them” and they are awfully precious and cute and all that.  But I think its remarkable how Bristol and the Palin family are essentially using pwecious wittle tigg or tipp or peep or whatever name they’ve randomly generated for him as a shield against their own hideous, hidebound, brutal morality.  It isn’t liberals and feminists who think that little babies are shameful—its right wing christianists who think that sex is awful, unmarried sex worse, and little bastard babies a horror.  Ann coulter’s new selling point is that *divorced women* should be “shamed” by re-iteration that they are “divorced” and not “single mothers” and that the children of divorce should be named what *they are* which, she says, is “future strippers.”  All of a sudden all g-d’s chillun isn’t so precious when they don’t fall under the control of the patriarch, apparently. So why is little tippy palin so sweet and holy? According to Ann Coulter the little bastard is just heading for disaster. Last I looked Ann Coulter’s on Palin’s side of the culture war.

All this aside I feel for Bristol. BAbies are wonderful but being the babysitter for both your own child and your mother’s youngest child is no picnic. Every one of you who has assumed that Palin is going to play some kind of helpful, doting, grandmother role is entirely wrong. All signs point to Palin using Bristol as the unpaid nanny to both Trig and Tipp while she continues to jet around as a hot ticket.  I expect Bristol will move out, eventually, and end up selling dope like her future mother in law. Not because she’s not a nice kid and all that but because that is the option available to a high school drop out with a dope dealing boyfriend and a new baby.

aimai

aimai:

Don’t they already have a fulltime nanny for Trig? If you have time to give interviews (which involve being awake, showered and not having food in your hand) while you have newborn, you have somebody helping you with the little so-and-so. I’d figure they would have a nanny or two just because even Sarah Palin has got to know that Bristol has access to the press and a postpartum meltdown would be bad for Sarah Palin’s career.

I expect Bristol will move out, eventually, and end up selling dope like her future mother in law. Not because she’s not a nice kid and all that but because that is the option available to a high school drop out with a dope dealing boyfriend and a new baby. 

Maybe and maybe not. If she has the desire and drive to finish high school and go to college, her family certainly has the resources to make that happen, and to make it happen her without having to work just to make ends meet at the same time. I don’t know if she has that desire and that drive, and she may well go a different path. But it’s not a matter of how “doting” Palin is (do you know the family personally, aimai?). It’s a matter of them having resources that a lot of families don’t have. At the end, it will be up to Bristol and what she wants for herself and her kid. Having a kid that young and without education makes your path a lot, lot harder, but it doesn’t have to be the end of your life.

“What Bristol wants for herself and her kid”? With a take-no-prisoners set of parents like that? A whole lot will depend on the resources the governor is willing to make available to her daughter, but in practical terms Trip need be no more of a hobble to Bristol than Trig was to her mother’s campaign.

I have no love for Sarah Palin, but I’m not sure why people are convinced she will deliberately make her daughter’s life harder than it has to be. I mean, if Bristol goes on to be fabulously happy and well-adjusted and financially self-sufficient, doesn’t it strengthen the wingnut cause in their minds? Isn’t that what this post is about? How the wingnuts try to make teen motherhood look easy-breezy?

On which note, my larger point is that Bristol may have a really shitty life or a really awesome life or a life that is basically okay but a lot different than what she thought it would be or hoped it would be. But which side is right and which side is wrong doesn’t depend on any particular outcome for any particular teen parent, even one as famous as Bristol Palin. If her life turns out fabulously, it won’t mean the abstinence-only, marry-young-with-a-shotgun-at-your-head crowd is right. Because the only Bristol Palin is Bristol Palin, and people need to be able to make decisions about their sexuality and their reproduction for themselves, based on their own personality, resources, desires, religious beliefs, etc. If her life turns out shitty, that won’t be the reason we’re right. We’re right because as a matter of ethics and morality AND good public policy, teenagers ought to have access to accurate, unbiased information about sexual health, access to affordable contraception and access to abortion.

And I find sitting here making dire predictions about how shitty her life will be kind of distasteful. I understand that her mother has made these things a matter of public policy, and nowhere am I suggesting that her mother shouldn’t be called out. But we’re not talking about her mother. We’re talking about her.

the enemies of sex ed have made the kinds of conversations you’re talking about impossible, unless a teenager is lucky enough to have parents with a healthy and rational perspective on sex, which is a rare phenomenon.

I’m hoping to be that kind of parent.  My mom didn’t want me to have sex in high school, but she wanted me to have a happy sex life and expected me to have sex in college, when, you know, I found the right boy.

I plan on taking it a step further, and along with the “time and place for everything=college” there will be a big box of condoms where my kids can get at them and share with their friends.  Better safe than sorry, ALWAYS.
——

chinoga, I agree it’s gross and unfair to talk about Bristol as if she’s a celebrity in her own right, but her mom did throw her out there to the wolves.  Why I don’t think Sarah is the doting grandma?  The crazy speech she gave about how she wanted them to put off the wedding until they were both 18.  As if that magic number somehow made Bristol’s choice more of a real adult decision.

Bristol has no options, as far as I can see.  She’s an uneducated teen used to living a well off upper middle class life.  She has no way of maintaining such a life on her own.  She needs her parents’ support, and that support is only coming with the “right” choices, i.e., no abortion, marrying Levi.  I’m actually pleased that they still aren’t married, b/c right after Sarah made the “18 y/o” remark, I thought they were pushing for a wedding before the baby’s birth.  Bristol appears to be holding out for her summer wedding.  Maybe she’s holding out for not marrying Levi at all.

I really do hope the best for her and Tripp.  I just don’t see how they’ll get it, being who they are and considering their relations.

I married into a family like their family (but much less famous), and that’s just not how it’s gone down when young, unmarried people have ended up pregnant. Maybe the Palins really are terrible human beings, but among my in-laws, there definitely is pressure not to abort and pressure to get married, but everyone generally wants what’s best for the people involved and for the child (within their world view of what is best). That is to say, some of the people who have gotten married under those conditions, I haven’t been sure marriage is the best thing, but the pressure doesn’t come so much from “what will people think?” but from a mistaken idea that being married will force the father to “take responsibility.” Whereas my view is the father will or won’t take responsibility, and if he won’t, it’s better for the mother to find that out without the legal ties of matrimony.

As for them being from a well-off family, to my mind, that makes her more likely to finish her education and find something to do. I tend to the think the reason middle class people stay middle class isn’t because our families have so much wealth to hand down or teach us such great values (speaking collectively, not dissing my own parents) but because we are used to a minimum standard of living and do what’s necessary to maintain it. That applies to former juvenile delinquents like my brother and teen parents like Bristol Palin and my mother.

Bless your hearts, you folks may want to see a therapist to deal with these raging anger issues, before you turn it on yourselves.

One more thing: I think there is a weird kind of push-pull going on in evangelical Christianity right now in that it is becoming both more conservative/closed and more liberal/open at the same time. On the conservative side, you see evangelicals rejecting birth control, which used to be a purely Catholic thing, and a lot more pressure to home school. On the liberal side, you see more openness toward “fallen” people and less of the total hardass thing you’re talking about. I have seen this change in my in-laws just in the time I have known them (a little more than a decade). I think people became more aware of just how hateful it came off, for one thing, so some of it is a PR move, and also, to be fair, realized how hypocritical they were being. The trick is, you have to repent and really be sorry and praise Jesus for showing you the error of your ways. If she is sorry enough and especially if she gets married, I would be surprised if she is punished any further. I could be wrong, but I’m not coming at this from a naive standpoint wrt evangelicals.

I also think you shouldn’t necessarily confuse the stinginess and vengefulness of the public policies they espouse with how they behave in their personal lives. A lot of conservatives have a weird kind of cognitive dissonance on that front.

What Really Pisses off the Liberals is the Palin Anti Abortion Position which they seem to live by.  You want them to abort so you don’t feel so poorly about yourselves .

Actually, Dennis, we liberals are glad that Palin, and her daughter, had the <u>choice</u> to carry their respective pregnancies to term.

You’d probably prefer that we had laws like those in Romania before communism fell there, being the freedom lover you obviously are.

  Bristol Palin said she “obviously discourages” teen pregnancy and knows that plans she previously made for herself will now forever be changed.

  Teenagers need to prevent pregnancy to begin with - this isn’t ideal. But I’m fortunate to have a supportive family which is dealing with this together. Tripp is so perfectly precious; we love him with all our hearts. I can’t imagine life without him now.

Good god, gag me.  I, too, had a perfectly precious when I was 17 (back in the 1970s).  I loved her with all my heart, had a wonderfully supportive family and couldn’t imagine life without her.  Until she was 2 years old, when I finally realized my life was over, I was never going to get to college, and working 2 jobs and being a full-time single mom wasn’t as romantic as they made it out to be.  I put my perfectly precious daughter up for adoption when she was 2, went to college, got married (and divorced), and had a baby when I was ready.

As for perfectly precious daughter?  We “met” a few years ago.  She was adopted by a wonderful family, had a good education and upbringing and looked just like me.  I can’t imagine what her life would have been like with me, but I suspect not as good as the life she had.

On the conservative side, you see evangelicals rejecting birth control, which used to be a purely Catholic thing

Chingona, it cracks me up when Catholics condemn forms of birth control like the pill or condoms, because they are not “natural.”  If that’s the case, then perhaps they should apply such thinking to all aspects of their lives in order to be consistent.  For transportation, they should walk or ride horses to wherever they want to go, because the internal combustion engine is not natural.  Want to get somewhere that requires crossing water?  Try swimming, or maybe build a canoe out of a fallen tree.  They should avoid e-mailing and text messaging their friends and family, because only talking in person is a natural form of communication.  No heating the home with oil or gas heat too.  Just throw more wood in the fireplace.

Seriously, why are our genitals the only aspects of our lives where human invention and technology cannot be applied in the Catholic/Christian worldview?

I don’t get why we have to defer to some apocryphal notion of bristol palin as a private citizen. Private citizens don’t have their baby announcements in People magazine. I’m sorry for her, because she’s being used. And she’s been used her whole life. She’s the daughter of two people who barely have time for the children they have—every account of her mother’s life post governorship indicates that she was a neglectful parent—and to the extent that they allowed an ideology of anti-contraception and religious nuttiness to determine how they parented their children they have been doubly abusive of Bristol. By observing that on a blog I’m not doing something to bristol that’s distasteful. I’m *commenting on a distasteful situation.* 

As for the wonders of Bristol’s life if she can only reach out for it. Sorry, no. It takes more than mommy dearest’s temporary situation as governor to create and maintain a middle class lifestyle.  Accounts of that dysfunctional family indicate that they were unable to create a stable and honorable enough life for their oldest son and he wound up going into the army because he couldn’t qualify for anything else. They don’t prize education at all—you can tell families that do by the amount of study they do and that they demand of their children.  Allowing Bristol to associate with the children of drug sellers? Also kind of a no no in your ideal middle class family. 

Being a parent is damned hard work.  Bringing up your children so they are hard workers, know the value of education, can delay gratification in order to study and work hard, can take care of themselves (know when to choose to have sex, and what to do to prevent accidental pregnancies or STD’s) is actually work. And its work you have to want to do. Palin and Todd failed *spectacularly* on all those counts. Either they didn’t think it was important, they couldn’t model it for their children, or they were actively opposed to it.

They may have enough money right now for a nanny but what makes you think that they are going to miraculously be able to give Bristol the reverence and interest in higher education now that they couldn’t give her before?  I’m sure I hope Bristol discovers in herself an urgent need to get out of that rat trap of a family but its going to be damned hard.

Of course Bristol’s life isn’t over because she had a baby as a teenager. Of course she’s better off financially and socially than many another girl in her situation. So what? That baby and the necessity of paying for it are going to substantially crimp her struggle to create an adult life for herself independent of her parents.  I think posters who think that her parents are really authentically middle class are missing the true picture here—despite being mayor and now governor, and despite her expensive tastes, Palin and Todd and the social circle in which the children have grown up are distinctly not middle class, or even working class in a valorized sense. The oxycontin selling mother in law? the boyfriend? please. Bristol’s social circle is actually criminal (not that that makes it any different from Blagojevich’s family circle, of course).  Its going to take a lot of work to work her way out of that family.

aimai

““Bless your hearts, you folks may want to see a therapist to deal with these raging anger issues, before you turn it on yourselves.””

Also know as the “I have nothing of value to say so I’ll say something feeble and sexist and hope they get angry”  troll tactic.

I’m sure I hope Bristol discovers in herself an urgent need to get out of that rat trap of a family but its going to be damned hard.

Aimai, I’m totally alongside you here, but I think one thing that’s missing from the “Bristol’s choice” conversation is the very real possibility that Bristol intentionally became pregnant in order to get out of the family. It’s very easy to think that she stumbled into motherhood as a combination of lack of comprehensive sex education and pro-life parents pushing her to keep the baby because it’s politically expedient, and it’s not that this combo is not possible, but I think it’s much more possible that having a life as educationally and opportunity-stunted as Bristol has, that pregnancy and motherhood was the most attractive, realistic choice for her. I see that in the town that I live in all the time—we’ve got a small army of 13-14 year-olds pushing strollers up and down the main street here because the second they landed that 18-year-old boyfriend with a job, their peers and sometimes even their parents pushed them to become pregnant so that they could have a boyfriend with a job, or, barring that, at least a steady income of child-support payments. Rather than looking at teen motherhood as a guarantee to remain poor the rest of their lives, these girls look at teen motherhood as a form of financial security because they haven’t been taught that they can achieve their own lives and their own income, and they don’t see themselves as having options beyond high school. When my mother taught in a middle school in a poor district, she would tell me how girls would get pregnant because being a teenage mother and going on welfare was often their ticket out of neglectful or abusive households. I see that here as well.

When you look at Bristol’s upbringing, it’s hard to argue the case that her parents have made every effort to open doors and make sure that she can pursue every opportunity that her intelligence and ambition might present to her. If you’re raised to believe that your highest purpose in life is to get married and have babies, then why wait until you’ve got college loan debts to pay off when your system is functionally ready to perform its highest purpose before you’re even out of highschool?

Also, from what I’ve read about the Assemblies of God Church (the Palin congregation of choice) here (even from some other Pandagonians), Bristol and Levi are “already married” just by the fact that they’ve had sex. Getting Bristol’s name tattooed around his finger is just as valid a means of publicly acknowledging this union as a big frilly wedding—Bristol became Levi’s wife the second he stuck his dick in her.

You’re right, aimai. Anyone who dares to reproduce who doesn’t have the right levels of education is dooming their children to repeat the cycle of poverty. And just by the mere fact of choosing to reproduce before both parents have their doctorates they have proven their unfitness to parent. And any parent who has a child who enters the military or whose daughter gets pregnant at a young age is by definition neglectful. All good parents only have children who never make mistakes or take different paths than their parents would like. Really, CPS should come in remove the rest of the Palin children before any more damage is done. Seriously, fuck you.

Chingona,

Right on!  Demonization of the wronged doesn’t help.  Demonization of mothers doesn’t help.  Demonization in general doesn’t help.  There were people involved, they made decisions, and they’ll get to live with them.  There are people on the right and left politicizing this person, her mother, and her child in ways I think are not right.  But the focus should be on the issue, not this one individual.

It’s the policies that deserve demonization, not the people.  Even Sarah Palin is not the farking devil, though her stupid ideas are devilishly intended.  Bristol can become a junkie whore or an PhD candidate, or even both, and it won’t change my opinion about what should and shouldn’t be taught and available for teens.  What’s needed isn’t a shaming of Bristol from the right or left, though that has happened already, but some sort of policy that makes this kind of thing happen less often.  And that’s where the left can win the hearts and minds of voters and policy makers, because if we all become like the lefty charlatans of Citizen Ruth, we’ll never beat those other assholes.

The sooner you have children, the sooner you will pay off your child support.

fuck off chingona with your rad self. This has nothing to do with my imaginary elitism it has everything to do with the fact that two employed, theoretically productive members of society, Palin and Todd Palin, produced two kids who dropped out—Bristol because her community and her family don’t respect education enough to allow a pregnant teen to continue with highschool and her older brother because, according to reports, he was a major bad boy/fuckup who went into the military because he couldn’t hack regular work and quite possibly was in trouble with the law.

Bristol could have finished highschool while pregnant—why not? Other pregnant teens do. As for the son no sane person who didn’t have to would send their teenage son into Iraq or Afghanistan and no amount of phony patriotic suck up love will cause me to think otherwise. None.

Also, neither I nor anyone else commenting on this blog is “shaming” Bristol. To do that I’d have to write on in a published newspaper, be on right wing talk radio, or live in her community. I don’t. She doesn’t read this blog. And if she did I’d say the same thing with some hugs and kisses thrown in. I’m a parent of two girls for christssake. I love babies. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with teenage sex, teenage pregnancy (if its intended) or teenage mothers. I just think there’s something wrong with Bristol’s parents and their fucked up fake morality on sexuality and babies that enables them to publicily celebrate babies while privately fucking up the lives of the actual children they’ve produced. I say that not as an elitist on education, which I am, but as a mother. They fucked up. They treated their children like products instead of people, they taught them to value the wrong things (public chastity, privatly uncontrolled lust, carelessness with their own bodies and other peoples). Palin doesn’t respect education in her own life (viz her actual life and her reading habits) and you know what, Chingona, I don’t respect that. Education and self education is the birthright of every free man and woman in this society. To refuse, proudly, to self educate and to limit the education offered to your child is a crime.  I’m not talking about education for gain I’m talking about education for its own sake.

aimai

aimai

Grandma Sarah concurs:

Palin goes on to say that she initially looked at the out-of-wedlock, teenage pregnancy with “some fear and a bit of despair,” but now considers it an “amazing, joyous blessing.”

Don’t get pregnant kids, it’s an amazing, joyous blessing!  Morons.  Fucking mooooorrraaaaannnsss!

If aimai is a parent of 2 girls, they must not be teenagers or the stupid line, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with teenage sex, teenage pregnancy (if its intended) or teenage mothers.” would not have come out of her mouth. What ARE you thinking? Or are you? Teen pregnancy is one of the hardest things to make work. Kids raising kids is a bad idea. If it happens, you do the best you can but to say it’s okay is a stupid. I raised 3 kids and they are adults now so I’ve been throught the whole process and I thank my lucky stars a teen pregancy wasn’t one of the problems I had to deal with.

Oh I think the real problem that the Left has with Right Wing Sex is that it often
ends up with babies instead of an abortion, the Right it outbreeding the Left

In time the demographics will have results at the polls ;=_

kac90b, you had more wisdom and strength of spirit at 19 than most do at 40.

Before she was shotgunned by comments, I -think- aimai was trying to point out that being a governor does not eternal wealth bestow, and that Bristol’s nanny and other financial perks are probably not long-term. Since the Palins seem to be blowing cash like it’s going out of style and will (probably?) be financing an enormous wedding, it’s reasonable to believe that eventually this lifestyle will be impossible for Bristol’s parents to maintain. If so, Bristol has available to her the same ‘options’ that most middle-class (or, as aimai skirts around saying in so many words, ‘white trash’) young mothers still in their parents’ homes do - which include the same (bad) options so many young mothers take. Of course, it also includes the option of getting out while the getting’s good (thanks Ponygirl).

It surprises me that not one commenter so far, nor our esteemed host, seems to understand common Christian perspectives on sex, abstinence, contraception, marriage, or abortion. The straw girls, women, men, and babies abound… The “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven” bumper sticker is actually pretty accurate: You’d be hard pressed to find a Christian, including a fundamentalist Christian, who believes him- or herself to be “without sin”; they believe, rather, that their acceptance of Christ leads to their forgiveness - for everything.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t supposed to try to be as good as they can be, as they understand “good,” and to keep on trying, over and over, no matter how many times they stumble, no matter how far they fall. Both New and Old Testaments are full of God’s choosing absolutely the “wrong” people for God’s purposes: a man with a speech impediment to debate with Pharoah, a small and weak (and too young) boy to rule Israel, a whore to let Israel’s soldiers into Jericho, a Christian-persecutor to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles, Jesus’s hotheaded denier to be the leader of Roman Christians - and of course an unwed teenager to be the mother of God’s Son-slash-human-Self. The point of Christians’ trying to avoid sin (as they understand it) and of continually getting back on that horse is that they believe God’s grace - all-inclusive forgiveness and the trancendence of the soul - is a gift no one can earn, but that our gratitude for that gift and our love for the Giver should cause us to change our lives to please that Giver, the best we can.

Incidentally, Christians believe that sex in what Christians believe to be its proper context - marriage - is also a gift from God, and a damn fantastic one. “Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s,” anybody?

I’m not a “fundie,” but I don’t condemn fundamentalists out of hand, aiming as I do, however imperfectly, for tolerance. I am indeed a Christian, though I would defend to the death, etc., etc., those who believe differently from me. I (like Sarah Palin) am pro-contraception (google it, people) and anti-abortion; I don’t want abortion to be illegal because I think at this point the consequences of that change would be terrible, but I would have liked that point to be settled by State-by-State legislation rather than ruling. Palin is not my favorite person, but she’s far from my least favorite; I save that place for real enemies (none of you either). Although my three children are too young for single parenthood to be an issue yet, I can understand Palin’s apparently (but not actually - nice quote-doctoring, CBS) at-odds statements that she viewed her daughter’s pregnancy with trepidation but accepts her baby as a source of joy. Can’t you? Or is it too important to hate her and everything attached to her?

kac90b, you had more wisdom and strength of spirit at 19 than most do at 40.

Thank you so much, Which Witch.  A lot of people are horrified when I tell that story - they write it off to mere selfishness. (I don’t even bother to tell them that I sobbed my eyes out for a year afterwards). And I can’t say that selfishness was not some of the motivation, but I also wanted my perfectly precious to have the wonderfully stable sort of life I’d had growing up and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to give it to her.  Yeah, I finished high school 2 months before I had her, but that doesn’t get you very far - not even in the 1970s. 

I had every advantage of a supportive, wealthy family to back me up; but, in the end, they were not the ones raising my daughter.  I was.  And I simply couldn’t do it.  They would have backed me up on abortion, adoption or keeping her.  At the last minute I decided to keep her. 

What I think is awful about the Bristol Palin situation is I very much doubt her family was all that “supportive” of any decision she would make other than marrying her loser drop-out boyfriend and sacrificing herself to teenage motherhood.  Maybe she’s cut out for it, who knows.  I sure wasn’t.