It seems a child out of wedlock for strict religious conservatives is fine if you keep the baby and get married regardless of love and/or commitment. Is this the result of Gov. Palin’s strict adherence to abstinence only school programs? Was the personal consequence of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy a success story for a close knit family and their shared value system? Here’s Alexander’s take:
Some social conservatives who would use this sort of information to crucify a Democrat whose child became pregnant without benefit of marriage are defending the Palins for “doing the right thing.” Bristol is not getting an abortion, they say. She is getting married. She is living the family credo. Some social liberals are downright gleeful, arguing that this incident “proves” Sarah Palin can’t control her own family, or that her own conservative sexual beliefs are bankrupt, or most scurrilous of all, that she was covering for an earlier Bristol pregnancy by claiming her new-born son as her own.
Bristol’s pregnancy says nothing about Sarah Palin’s suitability to be the next vice-president just as Obama’s youthful cocaine use, or his middle name, says nothing about his suitability to be the next president. Data has debunked the abstinence-only approach as wishful thinking. Texas, for example, which strongly endorses abstinence-only, and demands parental consent before teenagers can get contraception, leads the nation in its rate of teen pregnancies, dropping only by 19 percent from 1991 to 2004 while the rest of country dropped by over 30 percent.
Meanwhile in California, where comprehensive sex-education is mandatory in public schools, the teen pregnancy rate dropped by 47 percent.
That’s what matters.
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