Palin's 17 Year Old Daughter Is Pregnant

Palin's 17 Year Old Daughter Is Pregnant

Yes, I'm disappointed by this--but doubtless not as disappointed as Governor Palin. The left, of course, has decided that this is a sign of hypocrisy. Huh? If Governor Palin had encouraged her daughter to have sex outside of marriage, yes, it would be. But as any parent of teenagers can tell you, you can tell them what's right until you are blue in the face, but they have a free will, they make their own decisions--and often, those are bad decisions.

I grieve with Governor Palin about her daughter's first bad decision to have premarital sex, and second bad decision to fail to use a condom. (Assuming that's the case. There were a couple of college students at our church in San Jose who decided not to wait--and the condom broke, accelerating their marriage plans.) But the daughter's decisions are not an indication of hypocrisy on Governor Palin's part.

Now, if Governor Palin had dragged her daughter off for an abortion, the left would have a valid basis to scream hypocrisy. But then, no one would even know about this, would they? I'm guessing that the louder the left screams about this, the more parents of teenagers will say, "I sympathize with Governor Palin." It doubt it will get any votes for the McCain/Palin ticket--but I can't imagine it turning any votes away.

There is one way that Governor Palin could use this to her advantage: remind everyone that the left promotes sexual promiscuity and premature sexualization of teenagers through their control of the entertainment media. I certainly wouldn't argue that this constant pressure is what caused disappointments like this. Teenagers and young adults have been making mistakes like this for many centuries. I recall reading an analysis of Puritan birth and marriage records that concluded that at least 16% of brides were pregnant when they said, "I do." For exactly that reason, the culture needs to be promoting restraint and mature decision making. The entertainment business is pouring gasoline on a fire when they should really be bringing a fire extinguisher.

UPDATE: Byron York of National Review went around talking to evangelical activists at the Republican National Convention--and received much the same reaction that I had:

“For me personally, it hit my heart this morning,” Sharkey told me, “because I was a 17 year-old girl, just like Sarah Palin’s daughter, and I had — I was in those shoes. And my son is with me, who will be 35 years old next week, and so I know what a difficult road there is for her.”

“I chose to have my son, and from that point I realized that I was a very strong right-to-life advocate,” Sharkey continued, her voice wavering ever so slightly. Roe v. Wade had been passed just the year before, and I already knew girls who were going through abortions. It wasn’t a choice for me; it wasn’t in my heart to do that. So when I heard the news this morning, it struck close to home for me.”

A few feet away, members of the Ohio delegation were finishing up business, and I asked Patricia Murray, a delegate from Cincinnati, what she thought. “I don’t even think this is an issue,” she told me. “It’s a family issue. It’s a personal issue. The only reason it was made public was because of her mother.” Nearby, Ben Rose, a delegate from Lima, said that, “In every case where I heard delegates talk about this, the first thought was to the human nature of it.”

Earlier in the day, just after I heard the news, I called Marlys Popma, the well-known Iowa evangelical leader who is now the head of evangelical outreach for the McCain campaign. Like Sue Sharkey from Colorado, Popma had a story to tell. It turns out she had had a child out of wedlock nearly 30 years ago, and it changed her life. “It was my crisis pregnancy that brought me into the movement,” Popma told me. “My reaction is that this shows that the governor’s family is just like so many families. That’s how my first child came into the world, and I’m just thrilled that [Bristol Palin] is choosing to give this child life.”

I asked Popma what she thought the larger reaction among evangelicals will be. “Their reaction is going to be exactly as mine,” she told me. “There hasn’t been one evangelical family that hasn’t gone through some sort of situation. Many of us are in this movement because of something that has happened in our lives.”

Yup. We live in an imperfect world, one that has been made even worse by the left's obsession with encouraging every 13 year old to be sexually active, regardless of the emotional and medical risks. This is a bad situation for Bristol Palin, and I'm hoping that what happened will be a warning sign to lots of other teenagers across America that it's easy to get carried away in the passion of the moment.