Bristol Palin For Trojans
Sarah Palin's daughter, now a teen mommy, calls abstinence only education what it is -- a crock:
(CNN) -- In her first interview since giving birth, the teenage daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said having a child is not "glamorous," and that telling young people to be abstinent is "not realistic at all."Bristol Palin says "everyone should just wait 10 years" to have a baby, rather than when you're young.
"It's just, like, I'm not living for myself anymore. It's, like, for another person, so it's different," Bristol Palin told Fox News' Greta Van Susteren. "And just you're up all night. And it's not glamorous at all," she said. "Like, your whole priorities change after having a baby."
The 18-year-old, who gave birth in late December, said she is being helped tremendously by her mother, grandmother, cousins and other family members. She is engaged to teen father Levi Johnston, who is now working for his father and trying to complete school, but said she wishes that she waited another 10 years to have a baby.
It was "harder than labor" telling her parents she was pregnant.
"Well, we were sitting on the couch, my best friend and Levi, and we had my parents come and sit on the couch, too. And we had my sisters go upstairs," Bristol said. "And we just sat them down, and I just -- I couldn't even say it. I was just sick to my stomach.
"And so finally, my best friend just, like, blurted it out. And it was just, like -- I don't even remember it because it was just, like, something I don't want to remember."
Todd and Sarah Palin were "scared just because I have to -- I had to grow up a lot faster than they ever would have imagined," Bristol said.
Her parents insisted that she and her boyfriend hash out a "game plan" immediately. And now her parents and relatives are all pitching in to help take care of the child, particularly when Bristol is at school during the day.
Van Susteren was delicate with the teenager but pointedly asked if "contraception is an issue here."
"Is that something that you were just lazy about or not interested, or do you have philosophical or religious opposition to it," Van Susteren asked.
Bristol quickly answered that she didn't want to get into specifics. The best option is abstinence, the teen said, but added that she didn't think that was "realistic."
Good grief! I could hardly read that without throwing up. How many "likes" can one person use in a conversation!
Charles at February 18, 2009 5:17 AM
--"Is that something that you were just lazy about or not interested, or do you have philosophical or religious opposition to it," Van Susteren asked.--
Well there's the million-dollar question, and the answer to all this, right there. Yet Palin, in spite of all her other good advice, refuses to answer it.
Pirate Jo at February 18, 2009 7:07 AM
I don't endorse abstinence-only education because I think it's important for people to know about birth control and so on.
That said, my understanding is that the recent study discrediting it showed that it was just as effective at preventing pregnancy and STDs as other forms of sex ed -- which is to say, not very effective.
Which reminds me: why is the HPV vaccine being marketed primarily towards girls? Just because guys can't get cervical cancer doesn't mean that we want to give it to anyone.
Pseudonym at February 18, 2009 7:36 AM
Agreed, Charles. If that interview had been something delivered in speech class, the girl would have just, like failed, you know?
It does nothing for whatever cause she may be trying to take a stand for, since that was not made clear either.
Juliana at February 18, 2009 7:38 AM
Which reminds me: why is the HPV vaccine being marketed primarily towards girls? Just because guys can't get cervical cancer doesn't mean that we want to give it to anyone.
They are now suggesting that it should be given men. Merck is trying to lock in the market though. And it can kill. I wander what the statistics are on the side effects/deaths to the number inoculated.
Deaths Associated with HPV Vaccine Start Rolling In, Over 3500 Adverse Affects Reported
Jim P. at February 18, 2009 8:40 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/18/just_say_oh_yes.html#comment-1634689">comment from Jim P.An epidemiologist I'm friends with sent me something a while ago about the adverse effects. I'm for preventing cervical cancer, of course, and I know about herd immunity, but I'm not for forcing immunizations with a drug that may have serious side-effects for many. I think the rush to get behind this drug was premature.
Amy Alkon at February 18, 2009 8:50 AM
Well, old Sara cant say too much about Bristol being a unwed tramp since old Sara was knockin boots at her age too..but she really gets on her high horse about the babys so called white trash in laws..the doped out Mother probably sharin dope with Rush Lumbaugh and nooone knows it..
Lawntawndra Jankins at February 18, 2009 9:19 AM
My guess is the Bristol is trying not to say something that she knows will piss her mother off. She admits that abstinence is unrealistic and thinks women should wait ten years before having kids. If you don't use birth control or abstain and want to wait 10 years, you're left with wishfull thinking (I hope I don't get pregnant, I hope I don't get pregent, ..., or please god, don't let me get pregnent).
Pseudonym -what study was that that show abstinence was as effective of other forms of sex ed? Everything I've read indicates that where abstinence only education was done, STD and unwanted pregnancies either went up from before abstinence only was taught, or was higher than places where other sex ed was done. I'm not claiming that sex ed in general is very effective, but that abstinence only teaching is worse than nothing.
While giving the HPV vaccine to everybody would be more effective than just to women, it should come close to breaking the cycle of transmission. If all the women a man slept with were vacinated, he would neither transmit it to them, nor get it from them. The only way for men to get it or transmit it would be with other men.
William (wbhicks@hotmail.com) at February 18, 2009 10:23 AM
She's a high school student, not a grown woman accustomed to addressing international media.
> Palin, in spite of all her other
> good advice, refuses to answer it.
Well, Van Sustern presented it with a level of abstraction ("just lazy about or not interested, or do you have philosophical or religious opposition") that would strike most teenagers as a minefield. Notice the description of how the friend 'just blurted it out'... Bristol doesn't seem like a kid who handles unpleasant truth by simple, direct phrasings. She wants to be able to talk around things until the moment is just perfect. There are two settings where that doesn't work well: [1] Telling your folks you're knocked up and [2] television interviews hosted by aggressive lawyers.
PS- I don't have the heart to follow the link. Why didn't she marry the guy? Does he have a new girlfriend? Can anyone doubt that the family made a deal with him about keeping up a facade until the election?
PPS- Does anyone know/remember if they found out she was pregnant before or after Mom got the veep pick? I don't have the heart to look it up.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 18, 2009 10:45 AM
Palin has said publicly that she believes in teaching both abstinence and contraception.
Jim Treacher at February 18, 2009 11:03 AM
A-rod doesn't believe in steroids, Phelps isn't into dope. Palin's example is about learning, not teaching.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 18, 2009 11:08 AM
Crid,
I love your heart.
kg at February 18, 2009 11:59 AM
Pseudonym -what study was that that show abstinence was as effective of other forms of sex ed?
A study published in 2007 by Mathematica Policy Research Inc. showed that rates of sexual activity and behavior were identical between the abstinence group and the control group. The difference between the two groups was that the abstinence group had abstinence education added to the baseline sexual education offered by the community.
I don't know if that is the one I was thinking of, which was trumpeted all over the media as showing that abstinence-based sex ed was worthless, even though it only said that it was not more effective than other methods.
But like I said, I favor comprehensive programs. Even married adults sometimes need to know how to put a condom on (even though abstinence is often more effective for married people than for teens. Or so I've heard. *cough*)
Pseudonym at February 18, 2009 12:00 PM
"The difference between the two groups was that the abstinence group had abstinence education added to the baseline sexual education offered by the community." This shows the the abstinence training in addition to traditional sex ed has no measurable effect. Well ya no shit as abstinence is taught as the safest contraceptive available in any reasonable sex ed class. No one is really against abstinence as an option the main rancor is about abstinence only programs. Which have been shown to not work.
vlad at February 18, 2009 12:24 PM
not to add to this hysterical and frustrating mess, a friend of my told me that he heard that Levi had gotten another girl pregnant very recently. Hearsay, sure. But, the guy seems to lack any bit of common sense. I'd be interested in seeing how that pans out if it's true.
farker at February 18, 2009 12:25 PM
Which reminds me: why is the HPV vaccine being marketed primarily towards girls? Just because guys can't get cervical cancer doesn't mean that we want to give it to anyone.
Posted by: Pseudonym at February 18, 2009 7:36 AM
--------------
Yeah, lets give a drug designed for women to young men still developing without much testing on its side effects, let alone the side effect issues it has on women.
Sio at February 18, 2009 1:01 PM
Vlad: yeah no kidding. My point was, there's an awful shortage of sex ed programs that do work, depending on how loosely one defines "work". Beyond giving teens accurate information, though, what can we do?
Sio: I don't think it's ok to give untested drugs to women either.
Pseudonym at February 18, 2009 1:54 PM
I honestly couldn't care less what Sara Palin's kid has to say about sex ed programs.
Abstinence is obviously an option among many others. To think that abtinence alone will solve the problem is pure lunacy.
Charles at February 18, 2009 2:04 PM
"Beyond giving teens accurate information, though, what can we do?" Making parents give a shit and open their eyes would help. Bistol is a perfect example of how parents can drop the ball. Mixing religion and health/se ed can have dire consequences and her tap dancing around the issue of contraception however inelegantly shows it.
vlad at February 18, 2009 2:25 PM
Making parents give a shit and open their eyes would help.
Coincidentally that's the solution to the problems with public schools too. How?
Pseudonym at February 18, 2009 2:34 PM
"Coincidentally that's the solution to the problems with public schools too. How?" If I could answer that with an over all singular solution I'd be loaded from writing the greatest self help book ever. Education would help by showing the parents what happens when the screw the pooch taught by people they will listen to. No broad generalizations but useful perspectives and some basic psychology. Making them liable for their kids screw up might help but only if it's done reasonable. Putting a parent in jail for their kids truancy will only leave that same child even more unsupervised.
My favorite concept to teach is part of the basis of ABA. All behavior has a purpose and reinforcing that behavior makes it more prevalent. To put simply if the child screams and then gets what they want next time they will scream louder. The longer this pattern continues the harder it will be to break it. If the aberrant behavior fails to secure the desired goal that behavior will fade.
vlad at February 18, 2009 2:46 PM
Vlad, I think most parents give a shit, but making them open their eyes is harder. It's not even that, but more the fact that you can't teach your kids what you don't know yourself. Educated women have fewer kids than uneducated women - and by the way how irritating that I've never seen those stats for men.
Pirate Jo at February 18, 2009 4:39 PM
Suggested viewing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5sTBrs4fhQ&feature=related
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at February 18, 2009 7:14 PM
> Bistol is a perfect example
> of how parents can drop
> the ball.
Maybe. I hate single motherhood, but I can't imagine what else the Palins could have done. They gave the example of a loving couple who held off a good while before making babies.
Maybe Bristol was just a moderately-spririted daughter who got distracted by all the wheels that were turning around her.
Distractions included:
• Her family moving into the gov's mansion. Drama!
• Her big brother had graduated high school and gone through his own teen romantic scenarios (which high school gossips usually share younger sisters [drama!]), and he'd signed up for Iraq... Where young men somtimes die. Drama!
• Her mother had yet again proven herself to be a champion of fertility. Drama!
• But the younger brother had problems. Drama!
Who knows, who knows. But even when people are good-looking achievers, I can't look at a family photo like this without thinking "secrets".
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 18, 2009 11:22 PM
Abstinence needs to be discussed as an option. No one should feel they have to have sex, or continue to have it. I am also a huge fan of birth control and would like to see it flung from the street corners. I'd also prefer sex ed have actual facts. Condoms aren't foolproof, neither is the pill. pregnancy (and other things) is a possibility no matter what, and it needs to be thought about prior to fucking. Guys need to think what happens if the condom breaks with tonite's hottie, and she's prolife. You have sex, you just don't get to say I wasn't looking to be a father.
So the reporter's question was rather dumb. "did you just not use it, have beliefs against it", OR maybe it didn't work? It's an intrusive question in the extreme, and she should have refused to answer it.
momof3 at February 19, 2009 6:27 AM
This gets back to something I've been saying for years. By fucking, you are consenting to the creation of a child and committing to the raising thereof. Your intent does not matter any more than it does when you kill someone while driving drunk.
You engaged in an act with a known likelihood of an undesirable outcome. You are bound to accept that outcome.
I blame the lack of effective math education. If these kids understood probability worth a damn, they'd probably be better able to handle the whole "risk-reward calculation" thing better.
brian at February 19, 2009 6:33 AM
"I hate single motherhood, but I can't imagine what else the Palins could have done. " Well gee wiz maybe contraception would have been a good idea. Now I'm not saying that this shit won't fail but given her reaction to the question I'd say she wasn't on it. So either mom talked public contraception and preached abstinence at home or Bristol took her won view on it which would have been influenced by the parents, you know both of them.
"and by the way how irritating that I've never seen those stats for men." Ask and ye shall receive. The study is done in Slovenia the dynamics discovered are actually more complicated than I expected. Check out the Interdependence of age, gender and education starting at page 43.
http://tinyurl.com/bt8app
vlad at February 19, 2009 6:41 AM
"It's an intrusive question in the extreme," First if your giving an interview be ready for intrusive questions otherwise don't give an interview. She didn't answer shit she just just danced around the topic. If contraception failed I see no problem with stating that, no shame shit happens. Her reaction makes it pretty obvious that she did not use it and doesn't have the balls to admit it.
vlad at February 19, 2009 7:55 AM
> Well gee wiz maybe contraception
> would have been a good idea.
People like to blame contraception as a failure of mechanics, but I think that's a waste of time.
A teenager who, like, goes on TV and says "like" a lot is playing into your hands. If you (or other nasty grownups like that mean Ms. Van Susteren) want to blame the complicated rubbers or expensive medications, that'll be fine with the pregnant teenager. It's mildly offensive, but what the Hell, there are lots of insults flying around during a crisis like this. Having it said that she's too stupid to wear a rubber is hardly the worst. As noted earlier, she's not planning on winning every rhetorical exchange, so she won't even bother fighting this one.
Why bother? It's obviously not true. We'd all trust this young woman with a license to drive. Now, cars are mechanically complicated, and if you bungle it, you can kill a dozen people at once, even with a Mini Cooper. If she's smart enough to be entrusted with the saftey of strangers for hours at a time, forty seconds opening a condom is certainly within her capacity.
> given her reaction to the
> question I'd say she wasn't
> on it
You're getting warmer. I think almost every woman who gets pregnant wants to get pregnant, at least to an important extent. Women who really, really don't want to get pregnant don't get pregnant.
When you see all the profound, life-defining events that were happening in this kid's life at the time (as noted in the earlier comment), I'd bet a big part of her soul was looking for an expression of adulthood that could come only from her... (With the help of a local hockey player, the fellow described by the New Yorker magazine as "sex on skates.")
When your big brother, the beloved, competitive, dominant, rising star of the family for your whole life, graduates high school (music! ceremony! gowns! family dinner with macaroni salad & kudos!) and goes to Iraq (risk! manliness! unlimited potential for heroism!), it takes a big gesture to claim your own adult space....
The unconscious mind demands respect, just like the brainy part. And a young woman who says "like" so very often is letting that sleepy part of her soul carry much of the load.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 19, 2009 10:42 AM
> It's an intrusive question in the
> extreme, and she should have
> refused to answer it.
That's the point: She did .
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 19, 2009 10:44 AM
Errata: It was New York magazine, not the New Yorker, and you who cluck are playing into Bristol's hands, not the other way around. And I actually understand that it's her partner who would have been wearing the rubber, not Bristol....
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 19, 2009 10:57 AM
"You're getting warmer. I think almost every woman who gets pregnant wants to get pregnant, at least to an important extent. Women who really, really don't want to get pregnant don't get pregnant."
Amy, did you have some unconcious desire? Flynne? Any others on here who had a pregnancy they didn't want?
I agree, Crid, most Oops are just laziness. Or lack of informing yourself about the product you are using. The little insert that comes with the pill should be read. If it's not, and you take antibiotics that lower it's effectiveness without a backup, for example, then it's not an oops, it's your fault. Ditto with condoms and being exposed to heat. Back pockets, anyone?
I don't think agreeing to an interview means you have to answer any question, no matter how personal. Do we have a right to know if Clinton was using BC when she concieved Chelsea? Some things are irrelevant. I think the point of her interview-annoying likes aside-was to tell other teens it's better to wait before having kids. A great message, and one that needs to be played on a perma-loop in the ghetto.
momof3 at February 19, 2009 11:23 AM
I feel good about having made myself clear.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 19, 2009 11:32 AM
Crid, I really think you are on to something! I've seen teen pregnancy happen so much just in my family alone, and none of the girls have seemed devastated by it. It's just not a big deal anymore. All of the abstinence education in the world isn't going to work if the most major consequence of sex is not even considered a big deal! What are parents supposed to do, short of forcing their daughters to take birth control?
As for myself, the only time in my life that birth control "failed" me was with my second child, and I do think I subconsciously wanted it to happen.
Karen at February 19, 2009 11:48 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/18/just_say_oh_yes.html#comment-1634961">comment from momof3Any others on here who had a pregnancy they didn't want?
I'm told the IUD is highly effective in preventing the arrival of the stork.
Amy Alkon at February 19, 2009 11:50 AM
> What are parents supposed to do,
> short of forcing their daughters
> to take birth control?
The answer isn't satisfying.... Parents are supposed to give their daughters something better to do, something greater to aspire to than premature motherhood. (That's as unsatisfying as any utilitarian answer, because it doesn't really tell anyone what steps to take.) But so far as I can tell, that's how it's done.
Again, I just want people to imagine the animal forces that were at work in that family.
You're the eldest daughter.
Your Mom's a freak of nature: Not only the master of the largest State in the Union, but the undisputed, continuing Goddess/Queen of Fertility as well. (When birthing begins, she boards an airplane!)
Your (barely older) brother's life is hurtling down the runway, but you're still a geeky, inarticulate teenager, and there are little girls lining up behind you for takeoff into adult life....
How will you stake your claim in womanhood?
A lot of families have dramas like this. A lot.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 19, 2009 12:16 PM
"Do we have a right to know if Clinton was using BC when she concieved Chelsea?" If Hillary was talking about birth control and pregnancy it would be a legitimate question. Especially if that's the only reason anyone actually gives a shit.
"continuing Goddess/Queen of Fertility as well." She's in her mid 40's I'd hardly call that a sign of extreme fertility. Certainly not when you have the Duggers.
She wanted attention and now she got all the attention mom and dad did not give her in her own mind. She now has the countries undivided attention for 15 minutes or so.
"How will you stake your claim in womanhood?" How about college then ROTC or OCS? The ultimate fuck yall would be her being an officer while the kid brother was enlisted. Go become an ob-gyn at a Christian hospital. Or hell become a lesbian. These take 0-10 years to complete her road is a 18+ year haul.
vlad at February 19, 2009 1:32 PM
Enforce homosexuality starting in middle school and teen pregnancy will be a thing of the past.
Or, remove all welfare and make public education optional. Kids will be free to drop out and starve if they so desire, increasing personal responsibility across the board.
Pseudonym at February 20, 2009 8:43 AM
I used the pill and the IUD, and both worked fine for me. I tried a new (and therefore untested by time) form of contraception which supposedly had a 98% success rate (probably just PR bullshit), and surprise surprise, I got pregnant. I had an appointment by the next week and had the abortion 7 weeks in, so nipped it in the bud. If a woman doesn't want a baby, there's no reason why she should have one.
The IUD gives you very heavy periods and cramping, and my body rejected it after about 9 months (squished it out), so the doctor had to remove it.
Kids should be given extensive sex ed in school, with the emphasis on all the different kinds of contraception, and how to use them.
Chrissy at February 23, 2009 1:13 PM
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