Monday, September 01, 2008
The levees are holding the water
& so is Bristol Palin. Apparently a photo making the rounds showing the Palin family with a protruding tummy on Bristol was taken more recently than we thought. The young woman looked pregnant, & now we know she is.
There is no "choice" in the Palin family. Of course she has to carry the baby whether she marries or not. That's their religion. However, if she delayed telling mom & dad, she & the baby lost months of prenatal medical care.
What does it tell us about trusting abstinence? What does it tell us about the relationship between Sarah & Bristol Palin? Sarah Palin did not know her daughter was sexually active (most moms I've known in my own generation have been able to make reasonable guesses where a daughter or son was not forthcoming). What counts is what a parent does after learning about sexual activity. Order the teenager not to have sex? Turn the situation into Romeo & Juliet? Or say, if you're going to do it, you must use protection.
You'd have to be a really ignorant 16 or 17 year old not to know that when male semen enters a female vagina there's a strong possibility that an egg will get fertilized. By that age you're past the unscientific stupidities & superstitions of how to avoid becoming pregnant. You know there's only two ways to prevent it: Use birth control or don't have intercourse. This is why counselors focus on the unconscious reasons teenage girls want to become pregnant, on their parental relationships & family "scripts."
In the Palin family, becoming pregnant is a path to becoming the center of attention. It worked for mom. Five times. It's how an oldest daughter & a second oldest "invisible" sibling takes the spotlight off everyone else, if she fails to do it any other way. She hides the seriousness of an intimate relationship she's having; that's part of her invisibility. She may want to escape the family altogether. We can take a wild guess here that Bristol is not a happy, well-adjusted teenager. Big deal. This situation is not a matter of moral failure. The protestant right considers sex outside of marriage at any age a moral failure requiring a properly moral response to "consequences." They're against stocking condoms in the high school nurse's office. Bristol's pregnancy is a private matter & doesn't concern us; she & her baby will be well cared for (my personal opinion is Bristol should wait a year before marrying her boyfriend. She might decide the baby deserves better than the guy who fathered it). The larger policy issues it raises of how we prevent teen pregnancies & provide support services & health care must concern us.
John McCain might as well have a sitdown with Todd Palin as with his own advisors.
I'm not very susceptible to political conspiratorial paranoia. But I can't decide if McCain's choice of Palin was as simple a matter as it seemed to be - a "Hail Mary" pass to fire up Evangelicals & pull in a few disgruntled Hillary supporters, & Palin wasn't sufficiently vetted; or there' s some other crazy plan inside the highest circles of a Repug administration that doesn't expect to turn over the White House to a Democrat. The inability or unwillingness of the Repugs to groom & annoint Bush's successor prior to the primaries suggested to me that they might not be concerned about who ultimately got the nomination.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
There is no "choice" in the Palin family. Of course she has to carry the baby whether she marries or not. That's their religion. However, if she delayed telling mom & dad, she & the baby lost months of prenatal medical care.
What does it tell us about trusting abstinence? What does it tell us about the relationship between Sarah & Bristol Palin? Sarah Palin did not know her daughter was sexually active (most moms I've known in my own generation have been able to make reasonable guesses where a daughter or son was not forthcoming). What counts is what a parent does after learning about sexual activity. Order the teenager not to have sex? Turn the situation into Romeo & Juliet? Or say, if you're going to do it, you must use protection.
You'd have to be a really ignorant 16 or 17 year old not to know that when male semen enters a female vagina there's a strong possibility that an egg will get fertilized. By that age you're past the unscientific stupidities & superstitions of how to avoid becoming pregnant. You know there's only two ways to prevent it: Use birth control or don't have intercourse. This is why counselors focus on the unconscious reasons teenage girls want to become pregnant, on their parental relationships & family "scripts."
In the Palin family, becoming pregnant is a path to becoming the center of attention. It worked for mom. Five times. It's how an oldest daughter & a second oldest "invisible" sibling takes the spotlight off everyone else, if she fails to do it any other way. She hides the seriousness of an intimate relationship she's having; that's part of her invisibility. She may want to escape the family altogether. We can take a wild guess here that Bristol is not a happy, well-adjusted teenager. Big deal. This situation is not a matter of moral failure. The protestant right considers sex outside of marriage at any age a moral failure requiring a properly moral response to "consequences." They're against stocking condoms in the high school nurse's office. Bristol's pregnancy is a private matter & doesn't concern us; she & her baby will be well cared for (my personal opinion is Bristol should wait a year before marrying her boyfriend. She might decide the baby deserves better than the guy who fathered it). The larger policy issues it raises of how we prevent teen pregnancies & provide support services & health care must concern us.
John McCain might as well have a sitdown with Todd Palin as with his own advisors.
I'm not very susceptible to political conspiratorial paranoia. But I can't decide if McCain's choice of Palin was as simple a matter as it seemed to be - a "Hail Mary" pass to fire up Evangelicals & pull in a few disgruntled Hillary supporters, & Palin wasn't sufficiently vetted; or there' s some other crazy plan inside the highest circles of a Repug administration that doesn't expect to turn over the White House to a Democrat. The inability or unwillingness of the Repugs to groom & annoint Bush's successor prior to the primaries suggested to me that they might not be concerned about who ultimately got the nomination.
Labels: Grandma Palin, THE election
