Knocked Up

I think it unfair for a vocal minority of mad-dog Democrats to use the pregnancy of Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol as dagger with which to attack Governor Palin herself. We have no idea whether Sarah Palin has ever talked to her kids about sex, safe or otherwise (though admittedly, her socially conservative views would suggest she probably hasn’t, except to urge them to save themselves for marriage). Even less do we know whether Bristol and her boyfriend—whose own MySpace page makes him out to be something of a douche bag—ever talked about sex before having it, whether they had unsafe sex, whether they tried to use protection but used it incorrectly, or whether they used it correctly but it nonetheless failed. Without that information—without knowing how much the pregnancy had to do with Sarah Palin’s purported parental irresponsibility—it makes little sense to use Bristol Palin’s pregnancy as a battering ram against her mother. With that information, mind you, it might be fair game. But somehow I doubt that’s one body of facts we’re likely to come by.

The pregnancy, however, might make a more reasonable anecdote in an argument in favor of sex education in schools. I myself support sex ed and oppose abstinence-only education, mind you, though it strikes me as reasonable and prudent for such programs to encourage teenagers to preferably abstain. But as a former college classmate of mine argued convincingly today, the finding that even teenagers who have been taught to abstain not only at school but also in the home are still having sex would seem to undermine the effectiveness of abstinence-only programs, if not necessarily their soundness in principle. And as a staunch pragmatist, I firmly believe that a policy that has been shown not to work in the real world—however well-motivated or morally just it may be—should be discarded.

Also, can we all learn a lesson from this, and treat claims made by the fire-breathers at DailyKos just a liiiiiitle more skeptically? Whatever criticisms are to be made of the major media outlets’ coverage of Sarah Palin’s candidacy so far, they are to be commended for refraining from picking up the original hateful rumor DailyKos spread about young Trig Palin being Bristol’s daughter, not Sarah’s, and the latter’s “pregnancy” being a lie to cover up her daughter’s impregnation. Some folks just aren’t cut out to be reliable journalistic sources.