Women's Issue
Sarah Palin and her church and her pastor have made themselves abundantly clear on issues of reproductive privacy -- there won't be any. In a Palin world, if my daughter wanted birth control, she wouldn't be able to get any, and if I wanted sex education to be taught in my son's school, I would be out of luck. If a girl I knew were raped and impregnated by her uncle and she elected to have an abortion, she would not be allowed to do so. She wouldn't even be allowed to take the morning after pill in case he got her pregnant. Maybe there's something you guys don't get about this. Bristol Palin's pregnancy is at the heart of what women and the right wing have been fighting over for thirty years, and it isn't abortion, it's privacy and the right to control your own reproductive choices. There will always be abortion, and there will always be choice, but Palin would like the choice to be illegal and punishable. Same with birth control.
I like you, Barack, but you don't get it either. The issues of birth control and abortion have been made into public issues by the right wing, and millions of women and girls have suffered because the right wing wants to impose its ideas of what women should do upon every woman in America including those who don't share and have never shared their values. So, Barack, I suggest that you, as a man, should do the backing off.
Bristol Palin's pregnancy, which her mother has known about for months, is at the heart of this battle. It has been shown over and over that abstinence education doesn't work, while sex education does work. Do I accept that teenagers have sex? You bet I do, and I tell the ones I have borne how to make it safe and what to watch out for and be careful of, girls and boys. Sarah Palin, for whatever reason, did not do the same thing, and yet she presumes, PRESUMES, to tell me as a mother and a woman what I can and cannot do with my body, and what I can and cannot provide for my children.
Sarah Palin has constructed her appeal to the right wing around this "social conservatism" in exactly the same way that John McCain has constructed his appeal around his aggressive foreign policy views. Both are equally political, and as political as Cheney's ideas about the unitary executive, for example. Women are citizens, too, and our privacy is a political football, and has been used as such to win elections for a generation, so I supposed you mean well, you guys who are telling me to back off, but you don't get it. So shut up.
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Excuse me. But how do you know what Palin taught her daughter or didn't teach her. Do you have something to back that statement up? If nnot then I suggest that you retract it because you have no clue as to what you are talking about. Do you think kids whose parents teach them not to steal don't steal? Do you think kids whose parents teach them how to lie don't lie? For you to make the assumption you just did and to use that assumption to criticize someone you don't know is not only ignorant but it is typical left wing hypocrisy. You have no idea what was taught in the Palin home and for you to assume that she no longer qualifies to speak on her beliefs is ridiculous.
Right on Jane! As a husband and a father of two daughters, the
thing I want is a Sarah Palin, or the right wiing telling my wife
or daughters what they can or cannot do with their bodies. Any
woman with any self esteem should tell people to hell.
we are, Pelosi, Dean, Brazille, Kerry, etc. but we will really tell them come November
My thoughts exactly. I was especially offended by the wording of "we are proud of our daughter for her DECISION to have the baby". They let their daughter make a decision, but they want to take that right away from all others. How hypocritical.
Jane: I love you. I worship at the foot of your soap box. I completely agree with you and am grateful that you have the courage and talent to express what we are all feeling about this.
I figured out the answer to the question who is taking care of Sarah's child with special needs, we saw it this weekend - the older girls are responsible for the younger one. That's how fundamentalists keep their family together.
But that's not what I really need to say to you. I am having a difficult time rectifying HuffPost moderators deleting many of my comments on your blog. I have tried to get a response from them. My posts are generally positive, I don't cuss, I stay on topic, I'm not one to celebrate the death or illness of any person, I'm not racist, sexist, or homophobic, I'm not soliciting, spamming, and with the exception of this one post right here - I've never intended to provoke other comments from or about the staff at Huffington Post.
I wonder if anyone else is having these problems with your blog, Jane?
In any case, know that I'm cheering you on. I'm just not going to be able to take good time out of my day to give you your due "atta girl." It takes time to read and respond and I'm trying to participate, but apparently the "powers that be" at Huff Post don't like me for some reason. Adios, Jane!
Look, we are never going to give us our ovaries to the GOP or any other thing or party, or institution, including the Supreme Court. It's not going to happen. Let the holer-than-thou's say wht they want; nobody is going to force their beliefs down our throats [no nasties, please].
I agree with you! If this crazy woman succeeds then we will go back to a dark time in America. The fact that she chose to have 5 children and also is choosing to let her daughter endure a teen-age pregnancy was their choice. That' s the operative word here. CHOICE. Every woman should be entitled to the same right. As a woman that became pregnant in high school and was forced by society to marry the father I feel sorry for this girl. This was a time when abortions were illegal, and bith control, and sex education was very limited. At that age you have no concept of what life is about. You are grappling with growing up yourself, much less being a wife and mother. The physological impact of a teen pregnancy is enough with out all of the media scrutiny and reporting. I do not understand why Sarah Palin would subject her daughter to this but ambition can cloud judgment.
The religious right are so proud of Gov Palin and Bristol because they live their values. This isn't what they said though when Jamie Lynn Spears was pregnant under similar circumstances. This is from the website Evangelical Outpost:
"The Spears sisters, Britney and Jamie Lynn, have mutated from wholesome pop tarts to whacked-out baby factories.
and from Kevin McCullough at Townhall.c
"Jamie Lynn Spears pregnant and you know oh well, sometimes things just happen right? That shouldn't disqualify Jamie's mom from writing a book on parenting. I mean she's always been a good kid right? Never missed a curfew right? So mom let's the 19 year old boyfriend move in - its all good. Friends sometimes we need judgement in making choices as parents. Or do we - I guess we're just all victims here."
What an incredibly insensitive article. Jane, your implication that if a teenage child gets pregnant, the parents must not have discussed safe sex with them is ridiculous. If your teenagers are out having sex, it is only by sheer luck that they have not become pregnant, since, as you surly must know, no contraceptive is 100% effective. And talk about political motivations, to take what is probably an incredibly difficult and private family matter and use it to personally attack a candidate is reprehensible. There are plenty of forums in which to challenge Governor Palin on her abortion position. You don’t have to take the debate into her home. Your willingness to use her daughters unfortunate situation as a means to attack her mother shows someone who is more concerned with ideology, rather than compassion. Sad.
Thank you so much for your excellent article!
I understand and agree with your anger, but this is how the right wing has been for decades. They are authoritarians through and through.
Ms. Smiley while ur argument is good, you could have left Barack out it. Why can't you just make ur point w/o snubbing Obama and that back handed "I like you comment". Obama isn't trying to take away privacy or choice, Palin is as you pointed out. So stick to that and leave him out of your argument, because his mother was faced with this same choice and privacy and she chose life and he is the fruit of that decision! He made his back off comment personal and you are trying to undermine that which I don't appreciate it.
" . . . you, as a man, should do the backing off.", " . . . you don't get it. So shut up."
Sexism?
This fight over abortion has no basis in fact but is merely a psuedo social problem dreamed up by Male Religious leaders to maintain their control over women. What is equally appaling is that they brain wash women into supporting this absurd notion about abortion.
The reality is that the need for abortion is so graet only because these same anti-choice morons also want to prevent sex education and birth control. You cannot ever have enough cannon fodder to fight your religious and resource wars if you allow women to choose not to have children. And if you have a child out of wedlock, we are also going to deny you assistance because you are an evil drain on the morally uptight and right! Maybe women should take over and demand that all males be castrated. Wonder how males would feel about that?
Since the number one problem in the world, and the cause of every problem we are facing, what we need are fewer children, not more!
I understand why, although he knows this is a women's privacy issue, Obama has qualms about abortion, like so many of us do because of our beliefs. Smiley is certainly right to be critical of Palin and her judgmental ilk, but I do not think the abortion issue is clear cut, and Obama is right to try to get us to think about values shared by both sides of the debate.
Personally, I would have no problem with outlawing abortion if America also (1) made exceptions when the life of mother or baby were in question, (2) outlawed the death penalty, (3) enforced laws requiring deadbeat dads to take responsibility for their children, and (4) implemented universal health care, required that all mothers had paid leave, and took whatever other steps necessary to ensure that all mothers were cared for, that all children were cared for and had nurturing homes. As Obama rightly points out, the health and prosperity of mothers and children should be something we can all agree upon.
What angers me about the far right is that they want to both deny abortion and deny any help, such as sex education, universal health care, etc., to those mothers and children that they claim to care about. They show by these actions that they do not really care about nurturing life, just shoving their holier-than-thou morality on the rest of us.
Obama has no problems with religion at any point - his votes support that. His beliefs are clear - he wants women to be able to abort babies without concession up to the point of delivery. That's his record.
Jane, this article is spot on! Not only do we have issues of reproductive health and privacy involved here, once again we have class issues. Bristol is lucky that she has a family that will help support her and her baby (from what I've read the hockey player either won't or won't be able to). Contrast Bristol's situation with that of a poor unwed 17-year-old black girl whose own family can't afford to feed themselves without welfare? The Republicans condemn her as wanton and a drain on the taxpayer. Sarah Palin says she supports her daughter (which she will have to do one way or the other) but what if her daughter really wanted an abortion? Was poor Bristol really able to make the choice that the US Supreme Court allows that she can make?
To opponents of sex education: you can TEACH abstinence only, but do the children LEARN abstinence only?
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