The Palin family just won’t go away. Recently, we’ve seen Sarah Palin all over the news preaching what she deems a new “feminism” to women by empowering themselves through accepting traditional gender roles. In the news, she is said to have bonded with groups of women by revealing how hard it was to be pregnant at forty. She says that she “drove to another state to buy a pregnancy test” and “waited in a lonely, hotel bathroom” to find out she was pregnant. And now we have Bristol Palin, new mother, attempting to lead a crusade against teen pregnancy by emphasizing abstinence in her appearance in the television series, The Secret Life of the American Teenager. She is also a new spokesperson for the Candies Foundation, where she appears in an ad campaign as an ambassador against teen pregnancy.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpHlztPeHf8 425×344]“I hope it opens up a dialogue for parents to talk to their kids about teen pregnancy and the consequences. If I can prevent just one person from getting pregnant as a teen, all of this will be worth it.”
Well, Bristol, guess what else helps young women from getting pregnant as a teen? Access to different types of birth control, practicing safe sex and having access to clinics which specialize in educating women on their reproductive rights. But, because of people who champion abstinence over protection, our tax dollars just keep disappearing because they’re fed into ineffective abstinence based programs in schools.
Because, on the other side of the spectrum, when girls aren’t shoved into the American show time spotlight, young, pregnant women may suffer due to lack of access to education of their health and reproductive rights. In the news, a thirteen year old girl was recently hospitalized by attempting to perform a DIY abortion at her home because she was repeatedly raped by her thirty year old pedophile “boyfriend”. Another young girl allegedly paid a man to beat her so that she would miscarry the fetus, which in turn led Utah to make a new anti-woman law which criminalizes miscarriage. This is the real, heartbreaking tragedy that exists in our American story. Not finding out you’re pregnant, not fearing the consequences of your decisions on your mother’s political campaign… and then, reaping the reward by making appearances on a huge, national television show where you exploit your personal problems to make a little extra money. We feel so bad for you, Bristol, you sure have it bad.
