Making the Choice
John McCain’s presidential campaign wants to assure us that Bristol Palin isn’t being coerced into keeping her baby:
Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.
And good for her, but as Ann Friedman says:
John McCain and Sarah Palin don’t believe women have a right to choose. It’s absolutely absurd for the campaign to emphasize the fact that Bristol “made this decision,” and then push for policies that take away that choice.
Why shouldn’t ever woman continue to enjoy the choices that Bristol Palin has? And more to the point, if women shouldn’t be allowed to choose then why does McCain’s campaign think it’s important to emphasize her agency in this process? By his own lights, McCain should be totally indifferent to whether Bristol chose this course of action or was pressured into it by her mother. McCain’s view is that he should make the choice for her and for every other pregnant woman in the country.
66 Responses to “Making the Choice”
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September 1st, 2008 at 4:33 pm
I’m sure the choice they are referring to is giving it up for adoption or not.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Make them say that.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:40 pm
I mentioned this in another thread but i think it’s damage control. “Sure where didn’t exactly keep her from getting pregnant, but at least we knocked the antiabortion message into her head.”
September 1st, 2008 at 4:43 pm
The issue here is really Sarah Palin’s hypocrisy. She is staunchly for pro-abstinence education in schools (which is simply disinformation). Yet she is clearly incapable of teaching her own daughter the family values she wishes to impose on the rest of us. Doctor, heal thyself.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:46 pm
This is better than WWE! Its’ clear to everyone now that both McCain and Palin are anti-choice, so who do they think they are faking out with this nonsense? And Palin was picked as sop for the AmTalibangelicals – since when do they care about a teen girl making a choice?
September 1st, 2008 at 4:50 pm
She does not have the choice to keep the baby – as in, give birth to it.
She does have the choice to raise it herself or throw it into a foster care system.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:52 pm
No, she’s not the issue. Sarah Palin is a bright, shiny object that John McCain hopes will distract everyone until November.
The issue here is John McCain’s judgment for picking her without doing the proper vetting. The only issue for Sarah Palin is whether her family is ready for the rigors and stresses of campaigning and possibly governing at the federal level. That’s for her to decide.
In the meantime, this is all about John McCain and how he’s chosen to run his campaign. And what does that tell us about what he’ll be like as President, if he wins.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:56 pm
When I first heard of McCain’s VP pick, I thought it was an outright attempt to distract the public from the issues of the economy (not McCain’s expertise, as he himself proclaimed), and to focus on the right to life issues. Republicans love to distract voters from this issues that affect them the most by making noise about “moral” issues. This has to backfire on McCain, though. I have more faith in the intelligence of the American people than he apparently does. How moral is it to get married just because you’re pregnant, Sara Palin? Or, how moral is it to not teach your daughter about condoms or birth control to keep her from making the same mistake? And, what kind of family values include running for vice president of the United States when your infant son has downs, and your teenage daughter just got knocked up?
Americans can see through this political stunt, and McCain’s Vice Presidential pick should seal the deal for Obama.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Let’s say it were legal to rob banks. I think it should not be legal to rob banks, but as long as it were legal, I think we should not rob banks. Bristol Palin has a gun and is walking down the street near a bank, but chooses not to rob said bank. The fact that I applaud her decision in no way affects my simultaneous disapproval of the legality of bank robbing.
In this metaphor, I (as McCain) would also like to “make the choice for her and for every other [potential bank robber] in the country.” and there’s nothing internally contradictory about it.
That being said, the notion that the young Ms. Palin had any choice in the matter is laughable.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Let’s say it were legal to rob banks. I think it should not be legal to rob banks, but as long as it were legal, I think we should not rob banks. Bristol Palin has a gun and is walking down the street near a bank, but chooses not to rob said bank. The fact that I applaud her decision in no way affects my simultaneous disapproval of the legality of bank robbing.
In this metaphor, I (as McCain) would also like to “make the choice for her and for every other [potential bank robber] in the country.” and there’s nothing internally contradictory about it.
That being said, the notion that the young Ms. Palin had any choice in the matter is laughable.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:00 pm
This whole to-do about Bristol and her baby is an ill omen for the McCain/ Who? Really? 2008 campaign. Americans love pregnant teenage girls. Love ‘em. Especially conservatives who really, really feel quite empowered when the opportunity to natter and scold famous people for sex mistakes pops up. Nothing sets tongues wagging like a good, old fashioned teen pregnancy. Most importantly, the tabloid press, including Fox News, that informs the Conservative American house frau will keep this one in the news cycle until the election.
I do think it kind of sucks in one way. I was hoping Bristol and Tagg would get together one day.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Kids don’t always listen. Dick Cheney wasn’t plugging a gay lifestyle yet had a daughter who turned out lesbian. Al Gore wasn’t plugging pot use but had a son busted for pot. George HW Bush wasn’t plugging drunk driving, but he famously had a son busted for DUI who wound up in the White House despite that.
Even if Christian circles, we have good folks with naughty kids. Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney had his daughter knocked up by his Colorado footballers twice. My old pastor in Michigan saw his son have to go through drug rehab.
Some readers here might even see their kids turn Republican against their better wishes
.
You do the best you can to teach your children good values. Sometimes they stick, sometimes they don’t.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Where was John Edwards five months ago?
September 1st, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Mark, you seem like a McCain supporter. Riddle me this: if Palin is such a good mother, which is one of the key talking points that the McCain campaign has been putting out, then why couldn’t she control her daughter? If she can’t even govern her own family, why should we trust her to govern the country?
September 1st, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Not even the drunken Bush daughter harlots managed to get knocked up.
But then again, they weren’t vocal pro-abstinence kids.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Re: And, what kind of family values include running for vice president of the United States when your infant son has downs, and your teenage daughter just got knocked up?
I’m far from a McCain-Palin fan, but I have to wonder if a male VP candidate had a DownSyndrome child and a pregnant teenage daughter, would anyone ask the above question about him?
Re: why couldn’t she control her daughter?
Curious, were you ever a teenager? How well did you let your parents “control” you? The situation is embarrassing, but otherwise beside the point. Kids will be kids.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:15 pm
I’d be really curious about the time line here. As in, was the decision to keep the baby made before or after mom was picked for the VP slot. Not that I see Bristol really having much choice in the matter anyway, but boy, she sure would sink McCain now if she decided to abort and/or not marry.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Curious,
I’m not Mark, and I am an Obama supporter, but he’s right–these things do happen. Indeed, social conservatives are frequently that way because they’ve had experience with these things. But they’re not censorious with family, and they really believe that once you’ve conceived life, that life is family too. You no more dispose of it than you dispose of your baby sister. Obama is right; it’s time to give this stuff a rest. The stakes are too high in this election to keep fighting these culture wars.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:27 pm
I only have one thing to say about this entire pregnancy-gate: the abstinence-only “sex education” that Palin supports sure worked out well for her daughter.
Ok, two things: can anyone imagine what would be happening right now if Obama announced his teenage daughter were 5 months pregnant?
September 1st, 2008 at 5:27 pm
You can’t preach family values if you can’t be there for your family because you’re running a political campaign. They have some issues to deal with as a family. How easy is that to do when you’re too busy running as the GOP VP nominee? Male or female, the issue is the same, JonF.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:29 pm
David is correct.
This is not an election about small things. This is a decisive moment that is asking us where we want the great American story to go.
Is Bristol Palin not using a condom when she should have really worthy of inclusion in this chapter of that story?
September 1st, 2008 at 5:32 pm
One recurring meme is that “if the foot were on the other shoe, Republicans would be all over this!” Yes, this is true. One reason our country is in the shitter is that that’s how winning campaigns have been run in the past. As Obama’s supporters, here’s an opportunity for a winning campaign to show a good example for future ones.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:33 pm
This is a plus. As Mark Steyn points out in his recent best seller, America Alone, if our western civilization is demographically to survive in the increasingly “hostile to the west” islamic world — and not end up like the sinking European populations — these are the precise people (the Bristol Palins’) we should thank for increasing their progeny.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Well, yes, if it helps to tear her mother and John McCain down. I say that with complete honesty and sincerity. We should do anything to win. The stakes are too high. Karl Rove politics aren’t bad per say.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:41 pm
”
Kids don’t always listen. Dick Cheney wasn’t plugging a gay lifestyle yet had a daughter who turned out lesbian. Al Gore wasn’t plugging pot use but had a son busted for pot. George HW Bush wasn’t plugging drunk driving, but he famously had a son busted for DUI who wound up in the White House despite that.
Even if Christian circles, we have good folks with naughty kids. Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney had his daughter knocked up by his Colorado footballers twice. My old pastor in Michigan saw his son have to go through drug rehab.
Some readers here might even see their kids turn Republican against their better wishes
.
You do the best you can to teach your children good values. Sometimes they stick, sometimes they don’t.
”
This is not the point. The point is that if you are so damned convinced that your child-raising and teaching methods are the best, well they damn well work.
You do NOT have the right to tell everyone else how their kids should be raised, and then cop out, when it turns out your methods don’t work, to “oops, sorry”.
The second point is that you make it sound as though this is all just some lottery. Bullshit. There are ways of teaching kids sex ed that reduce the number of pregnancies, and there are ways that do not. The GOP very vocally insists on the methods that don’t work. When, yet again, they indeed don’t work, OF COURSE it is the fault of the twits who insisted on these methods in the first place. This is, of course, the standard GOP modus operandi, one more part in the war on science and rationality. Look, for a different example, at their approach to AIDS.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:42 pm
The issue was not Bristol Palin not using a condom, but her boyfriend not using a condom. And yes, I do find it very hypocritical and frankly disgusting that this woman who wants to impose her talibanesque moral views on the rest of us can’t even raise her own family according to those precepts. As the good book says, doctor, heal thyself!
September 1st, 2008 at 6:03 pm
As someone who will very probably vote for Obama, and who thinks that McCain can’t really believe that experience is important given his VP pick, I still find it not problematic for a pro-life person to applaud someone choosing to bring a child to term.
For example, I think that it should be illegal for local government to take property and give it to others for a higher property tax, but the Supreme Court has said that it is legal. I will still commend those city council and county commission office holders who refrain from using eminent domain in this fashion.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:05 pm
these are the precise people (the Bristol Palins’) we should thank for increasing their progeny.
Insert Idiocracy reference here.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I’m not sure I get Friedman’s point. If infanticide were legal & Bristol Palin had an infant & chose not to kill it, pro-life people would celebrate her choice as the right one, given the legally eligible options. But that doesn’t entail the view that she should have had the right to choose otherwise. It’s not inconsistent to think no one should be permitted to do X, but if they are permitted to do it, they should choose not to exercise the option.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Don’t know if you’ve seen the latest news, but even Obama says that you & your ilk are slimeballs: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/obama-to-media.html
Good on him! If you actually worked for the campaign you’d now be out of a job.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I’ve read quite a few comments by Mrs. Palin regarding teaching sexual education in schools. She is against SCHOOLS teaching sexual education, and she feels parents should have a say in what their children are taught. She has NEVER said that parents shouldn’t teach their children about sexual education and safe sex, she has simply been consistent that it is not the state’s job.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:26 pm
“Abortion Myopia”
The Corner is most often a lesson in neocon myopia, but in this case they’re right.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:40 pm
I’m with Gherald. When you see the word “choice” and all that occurs to you is that this directly contradicts the bumper sticker, maybe there’s another thought or two yet to come.
A charitable read understands they’re making the point that she is acting on principle despite what current law affords. I understand there is bound to be a reflex upon seeing the word “choice,” but maybe one should let it pass before posting.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:41 pm
>>I still find it not problematic for a pro-life person to applaud someone choosing to bring a child to term.
I don’t get this. If you are pro-life, doesn’t this mean you believe that abortion is basically murder? So why would you think to “applaud” someone for not “murdering” their own child? Isn’t that setting the bar pretty low?
September 1st, 2008 at 6:41 pm
So I guess the party of death (the Dems) only consider it a “choice” when the abortion option is “chosen?”
September 1st, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Are they the party of death because they start wars based off lies?
Oh wait…
September 1st, 2008 at 6:54 pm
To Gherald re Mr. Hemingway’s post on The Corner, you wrote: “The Corner is most often a lesson in neocon myopia, but in this case they’re right.” Mr. Hemingway goes on to discuss that the “choice” they could be referring to is the choice to keep the baby or give it up for adoption.
Hemingway does this by referring only to this snippet from a Reuters story: “Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.”
However, Palin’s actual statement reads: “We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents”. There is a difference, at least in my mind, to “keeping” the baby, or “having” the baby. The former is the choice between raising the baby or putting it up for adoption; the latter is the choice between having the baby or having an abortion. Palin’s use of “have her baby”, to me, suggests that she is referring to her daughter’s decision re abortion.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:54 pm
“So I guess the party of death (the Dems) only consider it a “choice” when the abortion option is “chosen?””
No. Choice means choice of whether or not to bear the child.
And given their support for the senseless slaughter of over 4000 Americans and 10s of thousands of Iraqis and their support for the death penalty, the Republican party is clearly the “party of death.”
September 1st, 2008 at 7:16 pm
All this talk about parents controlling their kids reminds me of this joke.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Hey Matt,
Their are some choices I don’t have. Like, just because you’re a dickhead, I can’t come and blow you away. You probably kind of like that non-choice. Maybe even think of it as a right. Too bad you won’t extend that right to the smallest and most vulnerable. But hey, they don’t vote, no focus groups, don’t have to look em in the eye.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:22 pm
“I have more faith in the intelligence of the American people than he apparently does.”
I don’t.
We’ll see who’s more in tune with the American electorate in November. I’m remembering 2004, where the same statement could have been made after four years of Bush.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Grandpa and Grandma for President!
September 1st, 2008 at 8:14 pm
What a bunch of ignorant comments.
(1) Does anyone really think this girl got pregnant because of a lack of sex education (like she didn’t know what causes pregnancy?????!!!!). She got pregnant because, like most kids, she thought she could dodge a bullet.
(2) I’m sure the choice was between keeping the baby and giving it up for adoption
(3) Try to be remotely classy…if that is even possible
September 1st, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Andrew already said it above, but it warrants saying again:
John McCain and Sarah Palin would prefer to live in a world in which women were forced to bear children whenever they got pregnant, whatever the circumstances. But they do not (yet) live in that world. The world as it is allows their daughters to get abortions if they choose to. When their daughters choose to live by their parent’s values rather than avail themselves of the choices that current law provides, McCain and Palin are proud of that choice. No contradiction.
If you believe, as McCain does, that women having agency is a problem that needs to be fixed, wouldn’t you be more likely to take note of it?
(On preview — what, no preview?)
September 1st, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Is Bristol Palin not using a condom when she should have really worthy of inclusion in this chapter of that story?
No, it isn’t. But her mother opposing condom use even among married people and her mother opposing insurance companies’ coverage of birth control and the campaign’s proclamations about the girl’s “choice” whatever it may be between while proclaiming that women shouldn’t have choices and her mother’s opposition of scientifically accurate education of ALL KINDS is absolutely relevant, and this is the perfect illustration.
September 1st, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Somebody please explain to me why this does not reflect negatively on Sarah Palin. When does parenting matter?
September 1st, 2008 at 8:26 pm
By the way brenna –
Sarah Palin is a longterm member of a group called Feminists for Life, which is not opposed to birth control.
September 1st, 2008 at 8:33 pm
You do have half a point. In choosing church leaders, having well behaved kids is often a prereq. Titus 1:6(NIV) “An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.”
However, that verse doesn’t translate well to the current situation. Firstly, this is a secular post and not a church post. Secondly, I don’t think the rest of the clan would fit the “wild and disobedient” label, and even Bristol seems normal outside of an certain indiscretion.
Good people often have disobedient kids. Aretha Franklin’s dad was a top Baptist preacher, something of a proto-televangelist in the black church circuit, but she had a kid out of wedlock as a teen. I mentioned Bill McCartney earlier. I’ve had good folks from church who seemingly did their best yet wound up having their own Junos going on.
However, the Palins are handling this with class. That’s a selling point.
September 1st, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Once again, the main point to take away from all this is that it’s irrelevant nit-picking. Matt is wasting his time on all this.
McCain isn’t running on a “no abortion” platform – he’s running on “John McCain, war hero POW”. Period. So whatever Palin’s kid does is utterly irrelevant to the election.
Sure, it’s easy to point out how Republicans invariably violate their own standards. We can talk Larry Craig all day.
How is that going to defeat McCain in November? It might have some small impact on the female Clinton freaks wanting to vote McCain or not, maybe. But the swing voters don’t care about the Republican abortion platform. They care about the economy and about war.
September 1st, 2008 at 8:54 pm
McCain’s view is that he should make the choice for her and for every other pregnant woman in the country.
That’s a pretty willful distortion and I’m sure you know it. McCain’s view is that states should be permitted to make the choice for her. He would prefer that states do make that choice, but ultimately it’s a state matter. If Massachusetts, for example, decides it doesn’t want to ban abortion as it surely wouldn’t, that’s fine by McCain. He just thinks that Massachusetts, or rather, the people of Massachusetts as represented by their state legislators, should be allowed to make that choice.
September 1st, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I think we should give this family their privacy on this issue of the baby. Things do happen in all families and being in office doesn’t make anyone exempt. For example, who knew Larry Craig liked to do men in the airport stalls. The issue that should be discussed is TEEN PREGNANCY and AIDS and CONDOMS and EDUCATION and SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASE….now those are the real issues that should be discussed about this 17-teen-year-old’s pregnancy. Sarah put it out there and that’s the part that should be dealt with publicly; not bad mouthing Sarah for being a mom. PEACE ON THE PLANET
September 1st, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Makes you kind of sick, doesn’t it? First, they talk about right-to-life values, nothing about chastity before marriage. Then they, under pressure, announce the daughter, unmarried, at seventeen is pregnant. Shows you the kind of values she was brought up with by her mother and father, doesn’t it? Then they claim it’s private; what’s private about running for Vice President, maybe President? This reflects badly on the so-called family values that this woman supposedly stands for.
Also shows how carefully McCain’s campaign “vets” their choices. If they knew about it, it’s damning. If they didn’t, it’s just as bad. A sign of how effectively he would run the Presidency.
Yeah, five months into it and not married. What a load of wishy washy claptrap. And how does it reflect on the parents, especially since they’re oh-so moral right-to-lifers who take the high ground because they’re so pure? So they force a shot-gun wedding on the boy or young man, tempt him with support, beat him up a little emotionally? A nice soap opera in a race that demands all the players be intelligent, moral, effective. It was her decision, yeah, right, how could you tell? Unfortunately, it isn’t a private matter, not with the Presidency of the United States in play and not with the kind of hardball politics John McCain has already been playing with Obama and Joe Biden. Tsk, tsk, it makes the Republicans seem shameful and dirty and undependable.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:59 pm
I don’t follow the argument that you can’t praise a person’s choice if you don’t believe they should have the legal right to make that choice.
If you support the fairness doctrine, is it hypocritical to praise a television network for choosing to present both sides of an issue? If you support mandatory community service for teenagers, is it hypocritical to praise teenagers who choose to volunteer their time?
There is absolutely no logic to Ann Friedman’s argument. She just seems to think that pro-choicers have some sort of ownership of the word “choice” in any discussion of abortion.
September 1st, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Look, for a different example, at their approach to AIDS.
The best way to prevent the spread of AIDs is:
If you’re going to have sex, don’t do it up the butt, and don’t do intravenous drugs. If you must do it up the butt, use a condom, if you must do intravenous drugs, get someone who works for a lab supply company to get you clear syringes and needles (or at least do not share needles and syringes).
If you follow those two rules, AIDS will not spread very far. Vaginal intercourse does not appear to be a very efficient method for spreading HIV, except maybe in Africa, and even then it is questionable that that is how it is being spread.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:52 am
Talk about a double standard! If the tables were turned, and it was Senator Obama who had a 17 year-old daughter who turned out to be pregnant, would the Republicans be calling for families to be “off limits?” My guess is that they would attack Senator Obama’s family with just as much relish as they have attacked his religion (i.e. Rev. Wright) or his patriotism. My recommendation for Senator Obama is to show the Republicans just as much consideration as they have shown him.
September 2nd, 2008 at 2:10 am
Hi my name is Claudia Miguel and I am taking AP Government
I think Palin is interesting. And I think McCain picked a “hot” vice president to catch attention
I think they are talking about abortion. to save the baby or not.
But in my case I think that Sarah Palin didn’t give enough guidance with her daughter because if she didn’t. Her daughter could’ve not gotten pregnant.
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:27 am
“However, the Palins are handling this with class. That’s a selling point.”
Uh, no. If the Palins had “class,” they would have declined the VP candidacy. They are way out of their depth, but lacked the “class” to admit it. Now they will have to pull out (or be pushed out), leaving McCain in the lurch. In what sense of the word is that supposed to be “class?”
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