danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

Here’s what I think about the controversy involving Governor Palin’s seventeen-year-old pregnant daughter: it’s much ado about nothing.  Teenage girls get pregnant all the time.  It’s been happening since the beginning of time, and it can happen to anybody.  Having a pregnant daughter doesn’t make Sarah Palin a bad mother by any stretch of the imagination.  Nor does it make her less qualified to hold whatever office she currently holds or seeks to hold.  In spite of parents’ best intentions, they cannot supervise children every minute of every day.

My only issue concerns the Republicans’ focus on abstinence-only education.  It’s pretty obvious that kids like doin’ it.  Nothing on earth is going to change that.  But children who have all the facts, and have access to contraception are much less likely to find themselves in the position in which young Miss Palin finds herself.  Access to facts about sexuality will not make kids sluttier.  Rather, it will lower the number of abortions, and reduce unwanted marriages.  I don’t know what Governor Palin’s position is on abstinence-only education, but if she favors it, I would then have to question her intelligence.  Adherence to irrational dogma in the face of manifest evidence contradicting that dogma is the definition of irresponsibility.

Filed under: Current Events, Health, Politics on September 2nd, 2008