As most of you know John McCain’s Vice Presidental Candidate Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol, 17, is a pregnant. While most people, including Senator Obama are feeling that this is a private issue and has nothing to do with Sarah Palin’s candidacy I feel that it does highlight a few very important things about her stances that we should pay attention to.
From the Wikipedia, “According to CNN, in 2006 Palin supported abstinence-only education in Alaskan schools. She wrote, “Explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support,” on a questionnaire while running for governor in 2006.” The concept behind abstinence only education is that if you teach students that sex is dangerous and bad that they simply won’t do it. No birth control then is needed, and no further education is needed on the matter. It can be generally seen against the education of proper use of birth control, and encouraging its use when sex is had.
It has been shown time and time again that abstinence only education simply does not work, and there many signs that show it actually makes things worse as while some people wait a bit longer, when they do have sex they are unsafe and don’t know how to be safe. They also don’t know about things like the Morning After Pill, and the anti-sex stigma lessens the frequency of std testing.
In case you can’t see where this is going, Sarah Palin’s abstience only education didn’t even work on her own daughter. It’s ineffective, and determinantal. I’m guessing that if she and her mother had a positive attitude towards sex, birth control and proper education that she would not be pregnant. Yea, yea, yea… birth control fails; rarely. Ever try to see how much water you can fit in a condom before it breaks? Gallons. If taken daily at the same time birth control pills almost never fails. If a condom does fail, morning after pill. Even in spite of this, things do happen and I understand that. I’ll bet $100 however that Bristol didn’t use a condom, and wasn’t on birth control. I’d love to eat my words and find that she was the .0001% chance of someone actually getting pregnant while responsibly using condoms and birth control, but it simply isn’t the case.
So the question comes down to this: Do you want your own daughter to have the same lack of education and resources available in school? Do you want her to have the same outcome? Keep in mind that Sarah Palin also voted to slash funding (‘Social programs’) which would have benefited young poor mothers in Alaska. She also is against abortion, so that if someone does become pregnant, that they under her policy would have no choice but to keep it.
Sarah Palin has referred to herself as a feminist, but she’s against education, reproductive rights and support for young mothers. She can’t even guide her own daughter properly. Do you want her guiding yours?
