The Relevance of Bristol Palin's Unborn Child

                                                                                                                 First off, my Mom was an unwed mother when she had my older brother. If she had terminated that pregnancy,  she would never have married my father, who helped her through this very difficult time (France in the 50s--you can imagine), and my other brother, sisters, nor I would never have been born.

Both my niece and nephew are the results of teenage pregnancies. I can't even imagine the world had my sister not adopted them.

Barack Obama's mother was 18 when she had him, and look how he turned out.

I am pro-choice, but not pro-abortion. NOBODY is pro-abortion, any more than anyone is pro-unplanned pregnancy.   I am anti-unwanted and unloved child. I was in prison with scores of them. They are exactly the same "precious human lives" the hard-on-crime Republican right seems to delight in depriving their "welfare mothers" of aid, then "educating" them badly in underfunded schools,  then using them as cannon fodder or warehousing them in prison. Want some irony? Some of these kids "saved" from abortion by pro-lifers end up on death row.  I don't think you are doing a child who will be abused or neglected any favors by bringing them into the world.  I think the first, fundamental right for a fetus should be the right not to be born.

There are two reasons the pregnancy of Palin's daughter should factor into the campaign.  One is that it underlines the fallacy of a Republican social agenda that insists the solution to teenagers having sex is vows of chastity and abstinence education. It doesn't work, and the vast majority of the children born out of such unions are born into poverty. (Happy endings are the exception, not the rule.) I think when the message the kids get from school and conservative Christian parents is to just say no, teenage hormones being what they are, the inevitable occurs. What bothers me is that Governor Palin cannot see, despite glaring evidence to the contrary in her own life, that the approaches she advocates simply do not work. And though I'm sure her grandchild will be very loved, what if Bristol wanted to give the baby up for adoption? And would anybody care to lay bets on the longevity of Bristol's marriage to Levi? Would he be agreeing to this union if he didn't feel horrific pressure because of his future mother-in-law's political ambitions? How can a party that screams about the sanctity of marriage be so willing to insist on one held at the end of a shotgun?

Palin's private life is pertinent only to the degree it points out hypocrisy.  For years, the right has been railing about "women's libbers" and "feminazis."  They don't mind women working outside the home anymore, but the clear bias has always been for a submissive wife who tends to hearth and home first and foremost. Can anyone in their right mind suggest that the Vice-President will not have to prioritize work over family?  I personally think it's a perfect opportunity for Mr. Palin to step up in the traditional maternal role, I just object to the way the left's attempts to make this feasible in the real world via day care and equal pay for equal work have been fought every step of the way by those now cheering so loudly for Palin.  As usual the right resists all progress, then embraces it as their own after it occurs. (See Civil Rights legislation and Medicare, for example.)

The second, far more important point, concerns how John McCain makes a decision. He's had months to vet potential V.P.s. Anyone with an I.Q. over 10 could have told him that rule #1 would have to be to choose someone without the kind of baggage that would fuel the breathless 24-hour news cycle that has become our national pastime. Whatever your opinion on Palin's parenting skills and relatively thin resume, it is undeniable that anyone who had more than a ten-minute conversation with her and a google search or two could come to the conclusion this woman brought with her some major potential distractions. Oops? What's that you say? John McCain made the decision after an 8-minute conversation and was too busy oogling her to google her?

I don't care how McCain'spinners are trying to spin it: this choice was not vetted, it was an impulse decision on the part of John McCain, who has obviously been chafing at the loss of his maverick status and wanted to get it back.

We've just had eight years of a President who shoots first and ask questions later (and a V.P. who just shoots!).   We need another like buckshot in the face.

MCO 2008