The swirling rumors that Trig Palin is not Sarah Palin's son, but actually her daughter's have now been squelched with the news that Palin's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant and planning to marry the father soon.
Ah, welcome to family life in the 21st Century.
I decided to swing by Pandagon for the "she should be killing the baby" angle and wasn't disappointed. Even after two years, I'm still surprised to discover there are idiots out there who think pro-life parents really want their daughters pregnant at 17. No, really. That's what they're saying.
Unfortunately for the nutroots, this announcement isn't going to cause the Christian Right to run away from Palin. That is sooo 1970s. No, modern Christians recognize that kids from good homes make bad choices, too. The point is to prevent them from going on to make worse choices like abortion. Hot Air has a nice post on the subject and how the nutroots completely misread Christians yet again. Ann Althouse makes the sorts of common sense arguments that will prevent Obama from trying to exploit the situation. But that doesn't mean the shrieking hordes won't try.
Michelle Malkin points out the difference between the two parties:
One ticket sees this as a blessing. The other sees it as a curse. Could the core differences between the two be any starker?
I just got through smacking Jeromy Brown around on CSPT (sorry no link; site is being a little buggy) about Obama's position on abortion. Like most Democrats, Jeromy is horrified at Obama being linked with infanticide, but can't come up with a plausible reason for Obama's actual votes. The argument given is that the bills were "redundant." But Obama's "no" vote wasn't going to change the future for the bill. Why be the only person to vote against babies surviving abortion unless it was to indicate to NARAL and other staunchly pro-choice groups that you will never, ever, ever change your mind? Even NARAL didn't fight the federal version of this bill. Is "redundancy" a good enough excuse to look so gruesome?
The Palins have proved that their pro-life beliefs aren't just lip service. They accepted babies that are less than perfect and accepted pregnancies that are less than perfect. Killing the baby because you didn't plan to have one is just a terrible option.
Ed Morrissey has a post on his own Sarah Palin experience when his son and (now) daughter-in-law became pregant in high school. What it illuminates is that pregnancy, even unplanned ones, are not catastrophes. They are just part of life.
I often think about this as my oldest daughter enters her junior year of high school. This is the place where parents become less authoritative and more supportive of their children's lives. Would I be happy if my daughter were pregnant? Probably not in the beginning; but supporting her would be more important than that.
The whole thing reminds me of a family from my church when I was a kid. They had a daughter who was a year older than I was who became pregnant when she was 17 (I think). In 1980, this was still pretty scandalous, and there were many parents in our church youth group who were very puckered about the situation. I was merely acquainted with the girl until this happened; after that, our families were very close for quite some time.
The parents did what parents usually do; they helped support their daughter but they made her support herself and her son, as well. This meant keeping a job, finishing school, and taking care of her son at a time when most kids are out having fun with their friends. This young woman eventually did marry a very nice man and has a good life. But things weren't as easy for her because of her decisions as they might have been.
All of this is to say that yes, having children when you are young can hinder your dreams and force you to make choices you otherwise might not have to. But in truth, having children always forces you to do these things anyway. Sometimes the timing is of your choosing and sometimes it is not.
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