No, it doesn’t. It means that she didn’t want to be a mother, period. It says nothing about favoring birth control.
Maybe, maybe not. I certainly can’t preclude the possibility that she’s simply being a mouthpiece for her mother. However, I do think there’s a certain irony in putting words into Bristol’s mouth (“She favors birth control!”) while simultaneously accusing her of being Sarah’s ventriloquist dummy.
There’s a story floating around today that the Palins got paid for Bristol doing an abstinence tour, so that probably explains why she did it, even though she pretty clearly doesn’t believe (and probably still doesn’t practice) a word of it.
I was obviously being facetious when I said she got pregnant from “practicing abstinence.” She got pregnant as a result of having religious finger wagging substituted for sexual education.
“Your baby is my cite!”
I have no idea what kind of sex education she got, if any, other than the type the rink rat was giving her in the penalty box. But the fact remains - and I think this has been repeated to death in this thread - that after giving birth to her child, Bristol Palin said abstinence-only education does not work, and that view is borne out by statistical data as well as her own life. Then her mommy had a brainstorm: “What, me President? Youbetcha!” Suddenly Bristol is speaking out for abstinence. So this isn’t about a parent trying to keep other people from making the same mistake. She’s actually encouraging people to make the same mistake she did, for political reasons.
Incidentally, Sarah Palin didn’t practice abstinence before she was married either. She married Todd because he knocked her up.
She was practicing abstinence, she just didn’t have it down perfectly yet. That’s why it’s called practice. She needed to work on it some more. And I’m guessing she still isn’t very good at it, because she kept having kids even after she ran out of real-person names she liked.
And of course, you arrived at this conclusion through a strictly rigorous and scientifically validated process using a sample size of one. After all, it’s simply not possible for a teenager to do as she wishes, no matter what her parents teach.
It’s interesting. Bristol was taught by her parents to practice abstinence, and she was taught by the school system to practice “safe sex.” Yet when she became pregnant, certain people here automatically took this as proof (again, using a statistical sample of one) that abstinence doesn’t work and that “safe sex” was the proper solution.
As others have pointed out in previous threads, when a teenager gets pregnant despite “safe sex” education, few people conclude that safe sex is a disastrous approach. After all, a certain number of failures are to be expected, especially when dealing with disobedient teens. Yet when a Palin child gets pregnant, people automatically blame the teachings that she got from her parents instead of questioning the instruction that she received from the school system.
What’s more, certain people here declare that she has no business speaking out in favor of abstinence. After all, she got herself pregnant, so she must be some horrible hypocrite if she counsels children to avoid making the mistakes that she did.
Let’s suppose that’s true. Should we logically conclude that she has no business advising her children not to make the mistakes she did?
Heck, for all you know, maybe she got pregnant while practicing “safe sex.” As long as we’re speculating, why not blame the so-called safe sex practices for her pregnancy – y’know, unless you’re willing to insist that those methods are absolutely foolproof.
I am frankly astonished at the attitude of some people here. They believe that if a teenager does something wrong, then she has no business telling other people not to make that same mistake. Diogenes takes that a step further; he dredges up Sarah’s own pregnancy, without any knowledge of whether Ms. Palin had been using birth control or making some effort at an abstinent lifestyle. From this, he clearly insinuates that Sarah must be some sort of hypocrite because she now takes an abstinence-only stance.
Make no mistake; there is indeed hypocrisy going on here, but it’s not necessarily on the part of the Palin ladies.
What makes you think she’d agree that she made a mistake?
I am not saying that she would necessarily admit to making a mistake. Perhaps she would, perhaps not. We do know that she wishes she had not gotten pregnant, so there is at least good reason to believe that she considers herself to have made a mistake.
Again, that’s not my problem. I’m only saying that having made a mistake should not prohibit her from advising other people not to make the same error. Some people here seem to think that admitting error is some heinous misdeed – a mark of supreme hypocrisy. The irony of that viewpoint should be pretty obvious.
As for Marley23’s claim that Bristol is only doing this for political reasons, I am perfectly willing to grant that possibility. In fact, I alluded to this in a previous post. What I am saying is that, contrary to what certain people here say, her prior pregnancy does NOT make her a hypocrite. Nor should we conclude, as various posters here claim, that the pregnancy can be placed squarely at the feet of her instruction in abstinence.
Some people here exercise a supreme double standard when it comes to issues like this. If some teenager gets pregnant despite the use of birth control, people will quickly point out that condoms and other contraceptive aids are not foolproof. Yet if a teen gets pregnant despite some abstinence instruction, they’re all “Aha! See! See! This proves that abstinence teaching is all a failure! The blame lies firmly on the shoulders of her idiot parents!” This, even if the child was instructed otherwise by the school system, the media, or her peers.
All studies show that abstinence only is far less effective than giving kids actual information. Kids who are taught about birth control get pregnant less often than kids who receive religious preaching instead of information.
So-called “abstinent” kids are also more likely to engage in saddlebacking.
Thank you!, John McCain, not only for losing the election and devastating the Republican party, but for ushering Sarah Palin onto the world stage.
Billy Carter couldn’t hold a candle to Sarah on his best, or worst, day.
Not necessarily, no. But I think we should be skeptical of people who go around advising people to do things they haven’t done themselves. They could be sharing lessons from experience, or they could just be atoning for upsetting the public. (Or fulfilling the conditions of their plea deal.)
That’s what happens when moral viewpoints go head to head with practical ones.
[QUOTE=JThunder:
Maybe, maybe not. I certainly can’t preclude the possibility that she’s simply being a mouthpiece for her mother. However, I do think there’s a certain irony in putting words into Bristol’s mouth (“She favors birth control!”) while simultaneously accusing her of being Sarah’s ventriloquist dummy.[/QUOTE]
I’m giving her the benefit of a doubt. The alternative is she’s a total hypocrite for saying “Abstinence is best… I myself didn’t follow it and neither did my mom, but you should.” Rather like Keith Richards doing a JUST SAY NO PSA, except I’ve never once heard Richards play the hypocrite on the subject.
What really pisses me off is that the Palins would be the first to scream and rant and rave about welfare mothers and public assistance, as evidenced by the fact they’ve done so, yet they’re encouraging other teen girls to not use birth control or abortion even though the vast majority of them don’t come from family’s like theirs where an unwanted unplanned illegitimate child poses no great financial strain. Families like… oh… the Johnstons.
White Trash Vs. White Trash.
I don’t know all that much about Palin. I do think she was in way over her head to go for VP. I do not blame her for reaching for the brass ring, I blame the repubs for offering it. She was just a local politician in the backwoods that let her ambition and greed take her to the wrong place. I do not care about her semi son in law. her family is none of my business.
But a person who quits an elected office to write a book and go after making money ,is not my kind of person. You just don’t quit governor. it was wrong. She can not talk her way out of that.
I’ll take COMMON BONDS for $400 Alex.
Alex: The answer is, Bristol Palin as spokesmodel for abstinence only education, the Montgolfier Brothers early experiments with helium, and Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaievich arteries
What are, one prick and it’s all over.
This is it exactly—These two attention whores deserve each other, and both will eventually be mere historical footnotes, listed next to people like the balloon boys and Jon’s & Kate’s of the world…
John McCain is an old fool who choose Sarah Palin solely in the vain hope she would let him root around in her gaping stinkslit.
If that were the reason, which I doubt, at least it would make a little bit of sense. I’'ll never understand McCain picking her. It made no sense: the only people she absolutely delivered were people who would never have voted for Barack Obama; I seriously doubt that fencepost women voted for her strictly due to the XX factor and for any who did she probably cost him at least as many votes due to her “Which Bush doctrine is that Charlie?” factor, and then the matter of not vetting her, not doing damage control over the strange relevations about her family (the fact she got on an 8 hour plane ride when in labor with a special needs child, the abstinence is working grandchild, the husband’s scandals, the firings, the library scandals, the in-law lawsuit, etc.) and then the quarantine on her- wtf?
I’ve even wondered if McCain said “get the Alabama governor” but the aid misunderstood him. Alabama’s Bob Riley would have been a 10x better choice: may not be the most intelligent or informed guy in the nation but he doesn’t embarrass us and compared to Palin he’s Benjamin Franklin, plus he’s proven he can work with both Bible beaters and Democrats (in fact he’s far more popular with Alabama Dems than any of his Republican predecessors and some of its Democrats). Pretty much anybody would have embarrassed him less, and again and again the only people who loved her were people who’d never vote for a liberal Democrat.
Sorry for the hijack, but she’s one of the great mysteries. I can only assume she totally did him.
It was a “Hail, Mary” pass, Sampiro, plain and simple. Underfunded, badly outpolled, forced to defend Bush’s undefendable policies, McCain decided to go after Obama’s only obvious weakness (well, this and relative inexperience): Hilary supporters, mainly the hardcore feminist agenda types, were (despite being traditional Dem. core voters) still smarting over losing “their” nomination to this nobody from nowhere, and McCain saw them as maybe voting R if he could get them a bright young woman on the ticket. He couldn’t know whether all her problems would prove to have substance, or if they could be minimized (or even used in her favor–appealing to Hilary supporters and appealing to those voters inclined to see all attacks on a woman as being inherently flawed are virtually identical appeals). For all he knew, she could turn out to be some kind of mega-genius on foriegn policy, oil, family values, boosting him a much-needed 10 or 15 points in the polls–he had a lot of ground to make up when he chose her, and he decided to see if he could pick a card that would fill in a straight for him. Didn’t work, but I think his reasoning is pretty clear.