Bristol Palin’s Pregnancy, the Tip of the Disastrous "Pro-Life" Iceberg

Is the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter off limits as a relevant political issue? Absolutely not.
    “It’s a private family matter,” a McCain strategist said. “Life happens in families.” 
     No, things happen for a reason. Palin, staunchly anti-abortion, believes the sum total of sex education should be about abstinence. So, presumably, in her household, the discussion boiled down to: Just don’t do it, not the nuances heard in any reality-based family, like: We really don’t like the idea, there are lots of risks, but if you’re going to do it, here’s what you need to know, here are the precautions to take.
     I’ll bet Bristol Palin heard no such counsel.
     It’s a sadly familiar tale: a girl reared on an abstinence-only diet getting pregnant too young and, probably with parental pressure, having the baby. Pro-life?  What about the lives of these adolescents who miss out entirely on the gloriously unscripted adventure of young adulthood? Now there’s a tragedy.
     These things just happen? No. This very likely happened because Palin’s daughter grew up indoctrinated by the narrow, cruelly intolerant, enforced ignorance of the Christian right. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to label this child abuse.
     And was she given a choice about having the baby? Was she counseled honestly about her various (legal) options? I doubt it. Her mother has the towering arrogance to say she has a God-given right to tell not only her daughter but all women what they can do with their bodies, so I really doubt if Bristol got honest advice.
      And yes, this is a relevant political topic because it underscores the utter bankruptcy of the “pro-life” position. These people don’t care about the stunted lives of girls who stumble, brainwashed and uninformed, into teenage motherhood. They don’t care about the women who would die or be maimed in illegal abortions if abortion were banned.
      And, most tragically, they don’t care about the millions of lives that are lost because our government, a pathetic little pawn of the Christian right, insists on abstinence-only education in AIDS prevention in Africa.
      A private family matter? More like one small part of a worldwide tragedy, a tragedy with the Christian right’s self-righteous fingerprints all over it.