timeimmortal

I don’t often disagree with the Shaidle, but I think I have to in this case. But first, let me say this much: I wasn’t thrilled to hear that Bristol Palin, the 17-year old daughter of John McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin, was pregnant. I agree with Kathy on (some of) these points:

Sex is where babies come from. It doesn’t matter that you “didn’t mean to get pregnant” and only wanted the fun parts. An extreme skateboarder doesn’t “mean” to break a leg in eight places, but guess what?

I’m glad she’s not getting an abortion. I’m less thrilled that she’s getting married, but she probably isn’t thrilled either. If it works out, great. It’s been known to happen. But she should have planned her life better. It really isn’t that hard to do. Call it “delayed gratification.” Just control your damn self.

But I don’t agree as much with this:

This makes the Palins look really really tacky and low class.

We should want people better than “tacky and low class” in the White House. I left Hamilton to get away from tacky, low class people and their pregnant teenagers. Now they’re all over my damn television.

We criticized Bill Clinton for helping kids think “oral sex wasn’t real sex.” But we’re all cool with this? Kids will say, “So? Whatsername’s pregnant.”

When it’s “one of us” we’re all suddenly “compassionate” and “forgiving” and “oh but that’s different”?

I think the main point that Kathy misses here is that we criticized Bill Clinton, because of the (admittedly poor!) decisions he made with Monica Lewinski and others. We can criticize Bristol Palin for the same reasons, because she has made some poor choices indeed…but I’m not sure we can really fault her parents for it to any real extent. Obviously, teen pregnancy is an ongoing social problem, and there is certainly real potential that impressionable teenage girls will take this revelation as a sort of tacit “hey, it’s cool” message where getting pregnant themselves is concerned.

But at the end of the day: a teenager made the choice to sleep with her boyfriend, and she got pregnant because of it. This is her mother’s fault…how? Yes, her mother is ardently pro-life, to the point of putting her money where her mouth is and choosing to carry a child with Down’s to term. Yes, her mother is pro-abstinence, and supports teaching abstinence as a part of sex-ed in schools. And yes, legally speaking, Bristol Palin is still the responsibility of her parents, and will be for another year.

She’s still her own person, and she made a bad choice. I don’t see how her bad choices reflect poorly on her mother. Some have speculated that Sarah and Todd Palin have been lax in their duties as parents to impart good sex-ed to their children. Maybe they have been lax — we cannot and do not know — but even if they were, their daughter still had a choice to make between right and wrong, and chose “wrong.”

In my own life, I’ve known parents who have imparted very good lessons about sexuality and Christian sexual morality to their children. Sometimes those lessons have taken, but sometimes they haven’t. Some people listen to good teaching, and some people don’t; Jay Currie speaks truthfully when he notes that “telling young ladies to ‘keep their legs closed’ tends to be less effective than the Pill, condoms or, Hell, even the rhythm method.”

Actually, my thoughts mirror Jay’s on one other point as well:

Does this make Mrs. Palin unfit to be Vice President. Hell no. It makes her far better able to understand the realities which are faced by families all over the world. It makes her capable of at least having the chance to rethink a rule against sex education in school because, let’s face it, she did not get the job done at home.

The fact that the Palin’s have a daughter who is now pregnant at 17 does not make them “look really really tacky and low class.” What could have made them look that way was their response to the issue, but their response was very tactful and honest:

Mrs Palin and her husband Todd said in a statement: “Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realise very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family.”

There is a world of difference between the man and woman making the above statement and the Hamilton baby mamas that Kathy decries in her blog post, not the least of which is the understanding that the first act of the family — their duty in Christ — must be love and compassion. And it’s clear that Bristol Palin will have that from her family.

At the same time, a second Christian mandate is also discernable in what has been said: the Palin’s know that Bristol is in the wrong here, and I would bet that that they have told her as much. They’re exactly correct: the road ahead for Bristol and her now-fiancé, Levi Johnston will be difficult, but it’s a road they will have to walk down. Unfortunately, he sounds like a bit of a piece of work, but then, he could have just skipped town. That he didn’t says something, perhaps. That, or he didn’t want to mess with governor Palin who, let’s face it, is probably pretty intimidating: she’s a passionate NRA member and hunts moose. That’s not some mother you want to cross.

Predictably, the media and the Left (but I repeat myself) are having a field day with the whole affair*, and in particular seem to be interested in attempting to nail Sarah Palin to the wall over her support for abstinence-based sex education using Bristol as their example. The Anchoress enumerates many of the hypocrisies that are inherent in such a move (with additional commentary here):

The party that has claimed that pre-marital sex is groovy and doesn’t matter, and — quite rightly — that one’s worth should not be judged by one’s sex life, is apparently all-of-a-doo-dah because of some scintillating rumors, good for whispering behind the hands, like a bunch of puritanical washerwomen. Puritans indeed. When they finished fainting, they apparently decided to start sewing the scarlet A, for Mrs. Palin. A-for-ADULTERER (cackle, cackle!)

No one should ever be judged, except Christians. If they have sex and don’t abort, they’re fair for ridicule, smears and sport. And a woman’s choice should always be respected; unless she’s the wrong sort of woman, the kind with an R after her name.

Apparently, since the left can’t really go after Palin on her experience (Obama has equal or less, and he’s running for the TOP job, not the bottom) or her record, which seems very appealing to a reform-minded electorate, the left has settled on the uterine comings-and-goings of not just Sarah Palin but of one of her “witchy-named” daughters, too.

Some of the more detestable commentators on the Left are even suggesting that Trig Palin, the Down’s baby that Palin carried to term, is actually Bristol’s first child. The lowest scumbags have even suggested that Todd Palin is, incestuously, the father of Trig, by Bristol. Vox Day takes both theories to the woodshed:

It’s hard to decide which is the more ridiculous idea: (a) That the governor of Alaska successfully faked a pregnancy and is passing off her grandson as her son, or (b) that Bristol Palin’s pregnancy somehow demonstrates the inefficacy of abstinence-based education.

Both notions require brain damage, an IQ at least 35 points below the norm, or willful ideological blinders for anyone who spends more than five seconds thinking about the matter to adhere to them. Palin’s pregnancy has been sufficiently attested to that it needs no further explication here. As for the abstinence argument, consider the following facts:

1. In 2001, the federal and state governments together spent $4,403,000 in Alaska on contraceptive services and supplies for 141,000 women of childbearing age.
2. Almost all U.S. schoolchildren receive sex education by eighth grade, most begin receiving sex education in fifth grade. This sex education may include abstinence programs, but it is almost never limited to them.
3. Bristol Palin was not homeschooled for most of her education and her fiance is a hockey player at a public school.

Therefore, Bristol Palin’s pregnancy is much more reasonably viewed as a failure of comprehensive sex education because that is the form of sex education she and her fiance almost certainly received, rather than a failure of the abstinence-only program that her mother favors and which she did not receive. One would have to be extraordinarily logically handicapped to indict a program that cannot be held responsible for a situation while trying to claim that the program that actually was involved in the situation would have prevented it.

Furthermore, abstinence programs are superior to other forms of sex education, at least when measured in terms of reduced STD contraction. This is what I noted in analyzing Sam Harris’s statistically tortured attempt to attack abstinence programs: “What he neglected to mention was that while the study showed that 4.6 percent of the abstinence-pledged teens contracted an STD, this was 35 percent less than the 7 percent of non-pledged teens who also acquired one.” - TIA p. 127

But let’s come back to where we started, for just a moment. Jay Currie notes one other important distinction between how Sarah Palin has handled the actual news of her daughter being pregnant versus how Obama responded to a hypothetical question about teen pregnancy, using one of his daughters as an example:

Obama stated - and I can’t be arsed to get the link - that if one of his daughters was knocked up he would not “want her punished with a baby”. Mrs. Palin has said:

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support,” the Palins said. ann althouse

Kathy is exactly right that we should want “people better than ‘tacky and low class’ in the White House.” But really, given the example above, who is the one who is really tacky and low class? Sarah and Todd Palin, with their messages of accepting responsibility, reminders of just how difficult the road ahead will be for their daughter, and emphasis on the importance of the love and support of family in such times? Or Obama’s “screw now, abort later” attitude?

Who really has the Hamilton ghetto attitude?

Kathy notes that she is happy that Bristol has chosen not to seek an abortion, less happy that she has chosen to wed. I don’t share this view: I think both are positive steps, and I think she will grow up quite a lot thanks to both of them. Bristol Palin will indeed have a tough road ahead. But she will have the loving support of her family, she will have a child to nurture and love, and she will have a husband who may just turn out to be a decent sort who will love and care for her “till death do they part.” Stranger things have happened, and as fates go that one is not so terrible at all. Bristol is unlikely to become another welfare baby mama.

Update: Peter Sean Bradley nails one out of the park:

If only John Edwards was the father…

…the media would have buried the Bristol Palin pregancy story.

Oh, and where were the thoughtful discussion on the need for sex education when Rielle Hunter got knocked up?

Hypocrites.

* The hypocrisy of the Left on this issue is actually quite staggering, as has been pointed out, both at SDA and at Protein Wisdom “for your delectation“.

I think the first sex education class I had was in fourth grade, just for the record, and almost every year afterward until high school featured another iteration of the programme.

I’m sure most people my age have had a similar experience of sex-ed. And we know how well that’s worked out, don’t we? As in: not well.

Apparently the problem is that we started learning this stuff too late in life. And now, a British charity is calling for kids as young as four to be enrolled in sex-ed classes. Because apparently that will work better.

Brook chief executive Simon Blake said: “Many young people are having sex because they want to find out what it is, because they were drunk or because their mates were.

“That’s just not good enough for young people. We’ve got to have high expectations for them so they’ve got high expectations for themselves.”

He added: “All the evidence shows that if you start sex and relationships education early - before children start puberty, before they feel sexual attraction - they start having sex later.

“They are much more likely to use contraception and practise safe sex.”

If kids want to have sex to “find out what it is” firsthand, then no amount of sex-ed is going to stop them from doing so — not if you start it when they’re one or when they’re twenty. If they want the experience, they’re going to go out and get it. And if you have kids — especially underage teens — having sex as a consequence of getting drunk off their asses, then that’s your real problem, isn’t it? Maybe that’s the problem you should be solving first.

The thing is, in this age where casual attitudes and the “hookup culture” that we see displayed pretty much everywhere have made sex into a recreational activity on par with jogging, it’s almost meaningless to suggest that sex should be deferred, as meaningless as it is to suggest that jogging should be deferred. It’s both hypocritical and contradictory to suggest that sex is one more “no, nevermind” kind of activity, on one hand, and yet behave as though there is something special about it which should be waited for and deferred until one is suitably mature.

Good grief, we can’t even agree on what level of maturity is suitable in that regard!

Moreover, even if we did want to posit that there is something special and worth waiting for about sex, we’ve also done our level best to ensure that there will be no penalty for transgressing against any such social morés — there is no longer any real scandal attached to teenage pregnancy, and the governments of most Western nations will be only too anxious to throw money into the pockets of young mothers so as not to seem “cruel”. Even when people make sexual choices that we want to regard as “bad”, we do nothing to discourage them from making those choices.

And then there’s one other problem:

Sixteen-year-old Bethany, from Norwich told BBC News she had not understood the consequences of having sex early on.

“I didn’t know I could get pregnant,” she said. “I think if they started introducing sex education a bit earlier and teaching us a bit more about it so that we were more aware it would have helped me a lot.”

The first thing I learned in sex-ed, way back in fourth grade, was a functional definition of sexual intercourse. I still remember the exact phrase: “the penis must go into the vagina…”

The second thing I learned in sex-ed, way back in fourth grade, was that pregnancy was a possible result of sexual intercourse.

In. Fourth. Grade.

If a sixteen year old girl is still saying “I didn’t know I could get pregnant by having sex,” there are way bigger problems there than the age at which she was first exposed to a sex-ed programme.

I didn’t say anything about the Gloucester 17 last week, but I trust the Reader is familiar with the story, or at least the main elements of it. Seventeen girls more or less made a pact to get pregnant simultaneously (or as close to it as possible), and then prior to graduating from high school. Apparently, it was the “in” thing to do. None of the fathers seems to be, in any way, present or relevant to the scenario as it unfolds — men as sperm donors, nothing more — and most of the “men” involved were older than the girls themselves (which means, I think, that most of them would be up on charges of statutory rape if they were ever identified).

One of the girls was evidently in such a rush to get pregnant that she had sex with a 24-year old homeless man in order to meet the deadline, so to speak.

There’s so much wrong with this situation that it’s almost impossible to pick a point at which to begin. The absenteeism of the fathers is worrisome and them some, but from the beginning it hasn’t been something which has been lamented in any way. Indeed, the pregnancy pact seemed pretty much built upon the understanding that the fathers would not be involved at all in the pregnancy or the rearing of the resultant child — the dads were, in other words, just sperm donors, and nothing else. The implication that men are no longer expected to take responsibility for their sexual actions is staggering.

There’s also the matter of age disparity. I realize that were everyone involved a bit older, an 8-year age disparity between participants in a sexual relationship wouldn’t be that much of a shocker. It’s happened before. But we’re not talking 32- and 40-year olds here. And to be perfectly fair, I don’t know what the law in Gloucester says regarding the minimum age of consent — around here, some of the fathers would be facing charges. That none of the stories I’ve read on the matter have said anything about the issue of statutory rape is troubling, I find, because the silence seems to carry with it the implication that the whole issue of older people exploiting (or taking advantage) of young teens in a sexual manner is no longer an issue at all.

The response of the community and media has been laughable, as one story after another has carried the lament that more and better access to birth control, or more and better sex education, would have prevented this travesty. Such reasoning is absurd: I don’t think anyone could doubt that all these young women knew everything they would have needed to know about birth control and “protection” — and none of them had in mind a goal that could have been realized through the use thereof. Birth control and sex education mean nothing to someone who has set out to get pregnant, and no amount of sex education or free condoms would have prevented this pact from emerging or succeeding.

What might have helped prevent this mess would have been maintaining, rather than stripping away, the social stigma against teenage, pre-marital pregnancy. If you’re anxious to get pregnant at age 16, and if you’re willing to go to the absurd, and potentially very dangerous lengths of having sex with the guy who lives behind the dumpster near the corner store, a little shame over your actions is probably exactly what you need to feel. If you’re willing to essentially torpedo your future beyond high school because you’re so deluded you think a stroller is The. Hawt. High School. Fashion. Accessory. Of. The. Year, a little shame over your actions and choices might just be the tonic you need to drink.

But we don’t believe in shame anymore, nor do we believe in right judgement. Our post-Christian social attitude can only lead us to say one of two things about these girls: “Hey, don’t judge,” and “Do what makes you happy, baby.”

Of course, most of these young women — or, come to think of it, their children — won’t be “happy” in the end. One commentator asked a very disturbing, but probably accurate question: how many of these babies, once born, will survive even half a year? How many will, later on in life, suffer from shaken baby syndrome? Ace, whose article I link to above, asks what is probably an even more prescient question: “Anyone thinking these seventeen girls’ seventeen children (with many more to come in the next ten years, I’m sure) will have a happy lot in life? That they’ll grow up well-adjusted and well-parented and successful?” Personally, I think Ace’s high-ball estimate of three (out of 17, remember) growing up into well-adjusted adults is…well…too optimistic. Most of these kids will grow up in borderline poverty, and will be the “sluttified” kids at the day-care, the slightly chubby five-year olds wearing the “Juicy” t-shirts and cut-off pants.

And in due time, they’ll be the ones having babies at 16 years of age, making their mothers into grandmothers before said mothers see even their 35th birthdays.

Post-Christian sexual morality for the win!

File this under “you can lead a horse to water…”

I think the good Reader can agree that Europe has evolved, in recent decades, very liberal sexual morés, and that European governments spend a lot of time and money promoting safe sex, birth control, and all the rest. I’m sure that sex-ed in European schools is probably quite comprehensive, much more so than in North America.

And what has been the result? Are European teens and young-ish adults more sexually responsible than their North American counterparts?

Apparently not: “[a] third of 16 to 35-year-old men and 23% of women questioned said they drank to increase their chance of sex.”

Almost half of participants in Vienna, Austria had drunk alcoholand had sex by the time they were 16 compared with 36% in Venice, Italy, 37% in Palma, Spain and 30% in Liverpool.

…

Those who had been drunk in the past four weeks were more likely to have had five or more partners, sex without a condom and to have regretted sex after drink or drugs in the past 12 months.

Cannabis, Cocaine or ecstasy use was linked to similar consequences.

Study leader Professor Mark Bellis, director of the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool said: “Millions of young Europeans now take drugs and drink in ways which alter their sexual decisions and increase their chances of unsafe sex or sex that is later regretted.

“Yet despite the negative consequences, we found many are deliberately taking these substances to achieve quite specific sexual effects.”

Chickens do indeed come home to roost; it was predicted, many years ago and many times since then, that comprehensive, birth control-focused sex education would increase the promiscuity and sexual irresponsibility of society.. Of course, only easily ignored conservative commentators were doing the predicting. Now that the evidence is showing that those predictions are being borne out, perhaps we can begin to re-think the damage we are doing to our children, and to ourselves?

And if you believe that title, O Reader, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

A recent survey — the first of its kind? — in the U.S. has revealed that one in four women is infected with at least one of four common STDs — human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, genital herpes or trichomoniasis. Fifteen percent of the infected women apparently have more than one of these four diseases. And — perhaps most shockingly — almost half of all African-American teens surveyed had at least one of the above STDs.

I know that Planned Parenthood was founded by a racist eugenecist who spoke at Ku Klux Klan rallies, but I didn’t think that their programs would be so effective at crippling the black population in America!

All facetiousness aside, these results are nothing more than shocking, and should be taken as a scathing condemnation of the ever-more comprehensive sex education programmes that have been fed to schoolchildren since about the 1960s. Unfortunately, the president of Planned Parenthood, one Cecile Richards, has taken the opportunity to say that this study “emphasize[s] the need for real comprehensive sex education.”

It’s not a surprise that Ms. Richards would come out and say as much — Planned Parenthood is a moneymaking operation first and foremost, and both womens’ rights and womens’ health take a back seat to its drive to accumulate profit. But that doesn’t stop Planned Parenthood’s top person from trying to shift the blame away from her own group, its beliefs, and the changes they and others like them have effected in the U.S.

“The national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure,” Ms. Richards said, “and teenage girls are paying the real price.”

I highly doubt that there is any teenage girl (or boy) in the United States that has not heard of a condom, and precious few teens of either gender who are unfamiliar with the use thereof. Condom availability is likewise not a problem; you can find them at almost any grocery store or corner drug store these days, in a wide range of sizes, textures, and flavours.

The problem, then, is not that teens haven’t learned enough about condoms and other “protective” measures — it’s that they are choosing, nevertheless, to avoid the use thereof, much as they are choosing to ignore whatever they might be learning about abstinence (since it’s damn hard to get an STD when one is abstaining from sexual activity). Because in spite of all the teaching, in spite of all the warnings, and in spite of the availability and ease of procurement of “protection,” kids still do whatever they damn well please. And no amount of additional education is going to change that.

Back in the barbaric 1950s (and before), STD rates weren’t anywhere near as high as they are now among the teenage population. There weren’t comprehensive sex education programs back then, nor were there condom machines in the bathrooms and racks full of condoms in every food or drug store in town. There was less “openness” about sex, and many people — especially Planned Parenthood employees — would characterize societal attitudes toward sexuality (especially premarital and/or teenage sexuality) as “repressive” (read: dependent on a measure of individual self-control and self-respect).

And yet it is only in our “open”, “enlightened” age that STDs are raging almost out of control in the population, in spite of the availability of condoms and the frankness with which children are taught about sex.

Clearly — obviously — the problem is that our comprehensive, explicit sex education programmes are not nearly comprehensive enough!