How not to kick off your vice presidential campaign.

According to this CNN article:

Palin said when running for governor in 2006 that she would support funding for abstinence-only education in schools, according to Eagle Forum Alaska, a conservative group that sent a questionnaire asking gubernatorial candidates their views on a range of issues.

Palin’s 17 year old daughter, currently a senior in highcshool, is five months pregnant. And unmarried.

FAIL.

11 thoughts on “How not to kick off your vice presidential campaign.

  1. THAT IS FULL OF FAIL. And lots of giggles. I mean, seriously? Abstinence only education? Let’s bury our heads in the sand now, ‘kay?

  2. She says she’s proud of her decision to keep the baby and marry the father.

    She thinks it’s a GOOD IDEA for her SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER to have decided that she’s going to marry this guy. At 17 years old. Because he got her pregnant.

    This, of course, is all better than her having learned in high school about sex and being given some way to PREVENT PREGNANCY. Because at 17 you’re not old enough to be learning about sex and how it happens and how to PREVENT IT. You ARE, however, old enough to decide on your own to keep a baby and get married.

  3. I think abstinence-education programs are crap. So I’m with you there.

    BUT. I don’t think it is her fault her daughter is pregnant. It was her daughter’s decision, not a reflection on her mother’s parenting. There’s only so much a parent can do. Tell me, at seventeen, were you listening to your parents? Were you doing exactly as you were told? Or were you like a lot of american teenagers — rebelling, learning lessons through baptism by fire, trying things your own way, doing whatever the hell you felt like doing?

    It is not Sarah Palin’s fault her daughter decided to have sex, and it isn’t her fault she ended up pregnant. The daughter made her own decision that was not condoned by Palin. Her daughter is old enough at seventeen to know the risks of the situation. And honestly, I’m impressed her daughter is owning up to her mistake and is handling the consequences. She isn’t taking a cheap way out. She didn’t try to have a secret abortion behind her mother’s back because she was ashamed, and then had to deal with it leaking into the national media. No — she owned up to it and is doing what she can the best she can to deal with the situation.

    And since you really don’t know the Palin girl, I don’t think you can decide if she is emotionally mature enough to have a kid and be married or not. Sure, she might be seventeen, but it’s not fair to generalize her for being that age.

  4. Yes, at 17 I was having sex… and my mother had me on birth control because she understood that telling me not to have sex was not practical or realistic. Of course she told me NOT to, but she was also smart enough to know that her 17 year old daughter wasn’t going to listen to reason and especially wasn’t going to listed to MOM. She also wasn’t supporting policy at the time saying that birth control should be BANNED from being talked about in schools.

    And LEGALLY, at 17 the parents are absolutely responsible for the consequences of their minor child’s actions. At that age you are NOT, no matter what you say to me, READY to become a parent and get married. It’s naive and somewhat ignorant to believe that is the case here. She hasn’t even graduated high school, she’s living at home, probably having her parent’s health insurance pay for the pregnancy, etc. Shoot, she’s not even old enough, in the eyes of the country that her mother is trying to run, to decide if her mother should be VP or not.

    She can’t even LEGALLY get married yet. I’m rather interested to see who the father is. If he’s over 18, I guarantee you there will be an even bigger backlash from all of this.

    Sure there are success stories out there where teenage parents pull through and beat the odds, but they are not the norm. And sorry, I will not support a person who’d running for office when THEIR OWN POLICY AND BELIEFS have backfired under their very own roof, not that I’d have supported her anyway for a vast number of reasons.

    I’m not trying to be all I’M A LIBERAL LETS BASH THE RIGHT! I am a liberal but I’m not about to act like Obama is some saint. They’ve all made msitakes but as a very young parent myself, this topic hits home and it’s appaling to me to see The Right try to spin this as if she’s some kind of saint for supporting her daughter when her own actions are what led to her daughter having to deal with this in the first place.

  5. I was having sex at 16 and 17, but my mother was on my ass about it, making sure I had condoms, pressuring me to get on hormonal birth control, warning my husband and I about the risks of pregnancy, and just WTF we would do if I got pregnant.

    No, her daughter’s choice to have sex may not necessarily be a reflection of her capabilities of a parent, BUT:

    1) it shows you how successful abstinence-only education is

    2) it’s pretty fucking hilarious in terms of irony

    That said, the abstinence-only bullshit ALONE ensures that this woman and anyone supporting her would never ever ever get my vote. I opt for the realistic approach to sexual education (Kids, you shouldn’t have sex because of A, B, C, but in case you do here’s what you need to know, and here’s how to get birth control!), and not so much the head-in-the-sand approach.

  6. I agree that kids at that age aren’t listening to what their parents are telling them, but that is why it is all the more important to teach them what they can do if they’re not going to listen. I know some kids have other ways of knowing, but some just really don’t have any idea. Whether her daughter was using birth control or not this just accentuates the reason they need to be taught – so that you don’t have 17 year olds making decisions that they are not mature enough to make.

  7. I think Sarah Palin is an idiot for not educating her child about sex. Her daughter got pregnant at 17. That’s pretty young if you consider the fact that just a year ago she was driving age. That would mean that in her first year of real freedom, she got pregnant.

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