Sorry for another Sarah Palin post, but it has just been announced that her 17 year old unmarried daughter is pregnant and I just had to get a few things off my chest about what I think this means for the Republican vice presidential nominee and what it says about the Republicans and their medieval beliefs.
First of all, this is the party of family values, abstinence only education, anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-feminist (up until Sarah Palin came along) and anti-working mother. The McCain campaign touted Palin's bona fides as a good conservative by noting that she knew she was going to have a Down syndrome baby and chose not to abort. Since Republicans do not believe in abortion for any reason, this is not an act of heroism so much as simply what they believe in. Good for them! This is at least consistent.
But what has always bothered me about the Republican attitudes towards sex, reproduction and the roles of men and women, is that they are often such hypocrites about so much of what they say they believe. If motherhood is more important than work to them, why did Sarah Palin return to work three days after having her last baby? It's amazing to me she was physically capable of such a thing, but even more it is something that does not show Palin to be very responsible. Didn't her job as governor provide for family and medical leave? Most working moms try to get at least six weeks off, or at the very least two? But three days? Who was taking care of the new baby? Bristol, her 17 year old supposedly was home with mono. Did they have a full time nanny? Palin's husband has a full time job, so I don't imagine it was him. I just don't get this. It's the most important thing in the world to give birth to a child, but not important to care for him just three days after his birth, especially considering he was developmentally challenged?
And now we hear that Palin and her husband apparently did not adequately supervise their 17 year old daughter, and that the abstinence education failed. Working parents know that going to work doesn't mean they (I'm saying both mother and father) can just leave their children to fend for themselves. What on earth were these people thinking? Teenagers tend to experiment with their sexuality, which is why those of us in the reality based community believe good old fashioned sex and birth control education might help prevent pregnancy. But if you only believe in teaching abstinence, and you know anything about teenagers, you had better be watching them day and night.
And I can tell you with certainty one more thing. If I was asked to be a vice presidential nominee, and I had a 17 year old unmarried pregnant daughter and a four month old son with Down syndrome, as well as two other school aged children, I would most definitely say "no." That baby and that 17 year old are going to need much more of their parents time and attention than can be given by a vice presidential couple, or god forbid if something happens to McCain, a presidential couple.
And why, for god's sake, would you expose your 17 year old pregnant, unmarried daughter to the srutiny of the national and tabloid media by accepting the vice presidential nomination? Is Sarah Palin so much a country bumpkin living her whole life in Alaska that she actually thought she could hide this? Was she hoping just to keep it a secret until after the election, or did she know her daughter would be in the spotlight and she just didn't care? What kind of parents do this to their child?
This woman is not only unqualified to be vice president, her qualifications as a parent are questionnable, as is her judgment.
How the Republicans can trot this woman out and still claim to be the family values party, and how conservative evangelicals can point to these parents as good examples, completely escapes me.
Update: By the way, John McCain is blaming liberal bloggers and Barack Obama for forcing Palin to go public with this. This is despicable. Barack Obama didn't touch any of the stories that were floating around. And while some liberal bloggers jumped on some unverifiable rumors, most were reluctant to jump to any conclusions. As for where the rumors started, my understanding is they have been floating around Alaska for quite some time. As to the rumors that have been disproven, bloggers are doing everything they can to stop them and correct the record. That's more than I can say for conservative "Barack is a Muslim" rumors that are still floating around nearly two years after they started.
