Tuesday, 09 September 2008
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I'm Chiming in With My Viewpoint on Sarah Palin's Daughter
from TwoCor517
I have read some of the blogs about Sarah Palin's daughter being pregnant at the age of 17. I have to chime in with my viewpoint.
Yes, it's not right that her daughter is pregnant. No parent in their right mind would want their teenage daughter to become pregnant. I'm sure that Mom and Dad taught her good morals and good values. But sometimes kids will rebel against their parents. Maybe I should re-phrase that to: most times kids will rebel against their parents' teachings.
These things happen even to the best of families. I am proud of her daughter's choice to keep the baby - after all, it couldn't have been an easy decision, especially being in the public eye and all. How easy it would have been for her daughter to get an abortion - and no one would have been the wiser -no public embarrassment or humiliation.
I applaud Sarah and her husband for not wanting their daughter to have an abortion to "save face." The whole family definitely took the higher road, the harder road, and didn't look for an easy way out to escape the responsibility or consequences of her daughter's wrong choice.
Babies born at the "wrong time" so to speak will make life more difficult for young mothers (and fathers). Life definitely changes for everyone when a baby comes into the family, at age 17 or 27.
What can we do to help? Well, the first responsibility of course, lies with the parents. But even members of loving and attentive families get themselves into trouble.
Perhaps the church should get more involved - show these young girls more love, more attention so that they don't have to find it somewhere else - and send the message to all our youth that sex before marriage is not just a “bad idea”, it is sin, and sin always brings consequences. I know that I could do a better job of that. There is one girl at church that I'm trying to spend more time with - I believe that she is at risk for problems in the next few years. But I don't do as much as I should and even if I spent all the time in the world with her - it is not a guarantee that she won't end up pregnant sometime. So if she did - I would accept her. If she came to me for counseling as to what to do - I certainly would not condone abortion. No way, no how. My daughter is now almost 28, married, with three children of her own; but if she had come to me at 16 or 17 and told me she was pregnant - I would have told her to have the baby, and I would help her to raise it if need be.
Another young woman at church has two little ones, by two different men. The second man she married. They are struggling right now with different problems. I read her blog, and I was very happy at what she wrote. Basically, she wrote for younger girls - basically telling them not to get pregnant, that it's really, really hard, and there are huge consequences to pay down the road. She wishes now that she hadn't chose that course of action - getting pregnant in the first place, before marriage. Not that she wishes she didn't have her children, because she loves them very much, but rather she was talking about the emotional side of having sex before marriage. I believe younger ladies definitely need to hear from young women like that.
OK, I'm off my soapbox for today.
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Comments (184)
Beautiful.
Before anyone else tries to say anything negative about this post, I just wanted to let you know I appreciate it when people post about hard things like this. Thank you for this.
Well written. The whole topic of chastity and abstinence before marriage has taken such a huge blow by the general public. Thank you for openly stating your view - and the view of many Christians. Thank you for openly stating that premarital sex is a sin in the eyes of God - a sin with sometimes devastating consequences. I applaud your post and may God bless you!
Wow...you have a tremendous amount of insight, great communication skills, and time to maintain it all on this site! What do you do for a living? Seriously, are they paying you for this? Or is your brother praying in the harvest?
I am very proud of Miss Palin!
The point is that she (palin) is for "abstinance only" sex ed, which does not make teens any less likely to have sex and makes them less likely to use condoms and more likely to get STDs, get pregnant, die and/or have abortions. Had her daughter gotten decent sex ed maybe she would've used a condom.
@agnophilo@xanga - bingo.
@agnophilo@xanga - She went to a public school where safe sex was taught. Not a valid point.
And you misspelled abstinence.
@ChildofGod86@xanga - @agnophilo@xanga - I think the point that Sarah Palin is for abstinence only is valid regardless of where Bristol went to school considering I thought the peolpe most responsible for teaching her that were her parents not her school. I go to a Catholic school and sex ed is not even discussed of course, that would be the job of our parents. But it seems that most of Sarah Palin's supporters seems to miss the irony of all this. It is funny that if this was Barack Obama's 17-year-old daughter, he would be attacked as this immoral parent with an immoral daughter. It isn't that Sarah Palin and republicans don't want to talk about Bristol, they just want to talk about her on their terms. They want to talk about how great it is she kept the baby, and it is, I don't disagree. I sort of find the implication of the original post that Bristol acted in some special way to be offensive by the way. Instead of holding her out as this special case, how about you mention the millions of girls our age who don't get pregnant because we actually live by our beliefs. I guess we have 2 more months of all this hypocrisy.
@agnophilo@xanga - In fairness, it depends on the kid themselves. I received nothing but abstinence education, and so did everything I went to school with. In the end, only one student got pregnant. The rest of us realized it would completely mess up our lives and took the precautions against it.
So does it make them less likely to have sex? Maybe not. But we sure were careful about it.
As much as I agree with what you said, sometimes we forget that it's more of a self-control issue too. If the two teenagers had practiced more self-control, no matter what they have been taught by their parents, church, or their school, this would have never happened.
It makes me sad sometimes to hear "if the parents had done this or had they done that".....you can't be with your kids 24/7, and they have temptations just like we adults have. No matter what they have learned from their parents (good or bad), or from their church, sometimes temptation just gets the best of us....period.
I do not condone what the two teenagers have done. I'm not the one in their shoes, though. I'm actually glad I'm not in their shoes. I've heard they intend to get married. My prayer is that the boy isn't marrying her just because her mother could be, or may be our next VP! I hope if he does, it's truly because he loves her!
@megank1991@xanga - Yeah, but you have to realize that to a republican, the way the democrats are acting is quite hypocritical as well. For example, when Clinton was having an affair in office, the democrats said that his personal life shouldn't have a bearing on his leadership skills. All of a sudden, since it's a republican, her personal life should?
It's just how it goes. It's hypocritical and demeaning, but that's politics.
What gets me is that this pregnancy is supposed to be a private matter. And then we have people trying to make legislation that will determine whether or not other people can have an abortion. Wait a minute. I thought pregnancy was a private matter! Only when it's your kid who's pregnant, right?
I think every mother who is forced into having an unwanted baby should send the kid to a politician to be raised. If they want the matter to be public, then they need to step up and take responsibility for the consequences of their lawmaking.
@bamfness__xx@xanga - I hear what you are saying. It's sort of like the saying "What's good for the goose, isn't always good for the gander".
@JandJinJapan@xanga - I didn't say "they'll just have sex anyway", I said that as a statistical fact they DO have sex at the same rate of frequency whether or not they're taught how to not get HIV and die.
If you know your child will almost certainly have sex before leaving highschool no matter what you teach him or her, and that sex ed makes them no more likely to have sex and only makes them more likely to have protected sex if that have it, WHY IN THE WORLD would you not want them to learn it?
@bamfness__xx@xanga - This is the first time I've made these criticisms, and I only did because the blog author brought it up.
But your criticism is valid, personal lives should be off-limits.
Now criticize republicans for going after obama's church, calling him a secret muslim and so on.
@bamfness__xx@xanga - Your class got lucky for the most part. Also I doubt if any of your classmates got a venerial disease they would tell anyone, so who knows.
But yeah, some "abstinence only" classes tell kids misinformation about sex and tell them condoms don't work etc. So they end up having sex and don't use a condom. I think the people who teach this crap to kids should be locked up for endangering the lives of minors.
@agnophilo@xanga - Obama and his church is fair game because he has been a supporter (publicly and financially) of Rev. Wright for 15 years. Rev. Wright is clearly anti-American and that type of relationship should be made public. Bristol Palin is not running for office and if the Democrats want to say that a mother who's daughter gets pregnant is a bad mother, then they will lose a very large population of America. Bad mothers and bad fathers are not necessarily bad presidents/vice presidents. In fact most politicians who rise to that level have had to neglect family for office at some point. Not that I believe Palin or Obama have neglected their families. My point is that the family of candidates should be off-limits (except for when they openly campaign) but Obama's church relationship is not part of his private life, his religion is not the issue, it is his relationship with a very strong anti-American, racist, pastor.
I think it depends on how abstinence is taught. If it's just a fear mongering that they'll either get pregnant or get an STD, then perhaps most kids will try anyways - after all, teens are notoriously rebellious. (not all of them of course ...being I was a teenager once upon a time) If abstinence is taught with a "BUT if you DO have sex, then do this and this and this to prevent this and that" - then you can bet your booty that they'll have sex. You've just given them clear permission to go ahead and experiement. IF however, abstinence is taught as a Biblical truth, if kids are taught that this is what God desires for them, if kids are taught from a young age how to respect their bodies and themselves precisely BECAUSE they belong to God - then those kids will be more likely to practice abstinence until marriage because they understand what sex truly is all about. That's how I was taught - not only by my parents but also by my church/school (and no, I am not Catholic) ......and I can say that the VAST majority of kids I grew up - and the kids I know now, are practicing abstinence, are virgins when they get married and proud of it - because they do it for God. In the circles I grew up in and currently am in, we have very few unwed mothers, few "shotgun" weddings and no known cases of HIV or Aids. Of STD's - someone had a good point- there may be some, but we wouldn't necessarily know. I believe that abstinence taught with the right motives and right understandings DOES prevent the problems that exist - not the least of which is teen pregnancy and unwanted babes.
@jgilgour@xanga - So is Sarah Palin's relationship with her long time pastor who says Iraq is a "holy war" and anyone who voted for John Kerry is going to hell worth discussing too? Is the fact that Sarah Palin herself stated that US troops are in Iraq on a mission "from God" worth discussing? This is someone stating that the US is in a Muslim nation on a mission from God. That would be a crusade.
For that matter, is John McCain's public embrace and friendship with a pastor who called the Roman Catholic Church "the great whore" worth discussing?
@megank1991@xanga - Yes those relationships are fair game. Did you think I was completely biased? I am not saying he should not be elected because of his relationship with his pastor I was just saying it does not qualify as "private life".
@jgilgour@xanga - No, I didn't mean to sound like I was saying you are biased. There are just a lot of people who will attack Barack Obama like crazy over Rev. Wright but then disregard the things about Palin and McCain.
@megank1991@xanga - I agree. We should be focusing on that and the fact this woman is WAY unbalanced rather than her daughter being a teenage mom.
I do not support Palin. She reminds me of a whitewashed sepulchre.
@megank1991@xanga - Well though I am not completely biased, I do support McCain/Palin, however I feel that things need to be fair. I also did not attack him, I just pointed out the relationship, so I will not attack McCain/Palin either, but it is fair game. I would love it if we lived in a country where just the issues mattered in a campaign but for some reason they do not and that will never change. Thanks for commenting on my comment.
@jgilgour@xanga - How is his pastor "anti-american"? And my criticism was of palin, not her daughter.
@nicolevw@xanga - Study after study has found that teaching sex ed does not increase the chance of a teenager having sex, it only increases the chance that those that will have sex have protected sex and don't get pregnant or STDs.