Words, words, words, art.

There’s been a hell of a lot of talk about Sarah Palin and her potential worth as a vice president, and her utterly utterly terrifying views on legislating reproductive rights. And there’s been a lot of talk about her pregnant daughter and OMG! A teenager! Having sex? Pregnant? What an utterly new development! Such a thing has never happened before! An unmarried 17 year who is also pregnant? I thought you HAD to be pregnant to have a baby!

Actually, Bristol Palin is very lucky. 

She grew up in a household that eschews birth control and pre-conception fertility management (and could someone please tell me why so much discussion of this particular issue seems to have a “either she’s pregnant or she gets an abortion” rhetoric instead of “hey, guess what? sex ed! It has a purpose!”) and, surprise, she got pregnant. And her parents… aren’t kicking her out of the house. Which is what a LOT of my high school friends (and hell, some college friends) were afraid of.

Bristol Palin will not have to navigate WIC or state-run health care plans. She will not have to take a bus for an hour and a half to visit a shitty clinic with broken asbestos tile on the floor and no working sinks in the bathroom (hello, Stroger County follow up care after my miscarriage!). She will not have to work a crappy minimum wage job and wonder who’s going to watch her kid while she earns just barely enough money to cover rent. She’s not going to have her parents (or hopefully her boyfriend) beat her up, threaten to kill her, or outright kill her for having sex and getting pregnant.

And that makes her incredibly lucky.

Bristol Palin’s family has money. Bristol Palin and her kid are going to be taken care of, financially and emotionally, by her family. She has a support network.

A hell of a lot of sexually active teenagers, especially young women who wind up pregnant, are not so lucky. The ones who have access to sexual education and contraceptives are a lot less likely to wind up pregnant in the first place, easing them onto a path that’s more likely to include higher education and thus a better paying job.

Sarah Palin thinks that women don’t deserve to know about or control their sexuality. Sarah Palin doesn’t care that teenagers, both male and female, can and do have sex. When teenagers are having uninformed, unprotected sex they are really likely to get pregnant. Having a baby at 17, for most kids, is a really bad idea that will literally cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in earning potential and also cost the government money in aid spent on them. Not all sexually active kids have parents who can support them, provide them and their babies with medical care, and take care of them. Not all sexually active kids have parents who are willing to provide for them and their babies and support them. And Sarah Palin wants to take away some of the tools that young people can use to protect themselves and guard their futures.

Sarah Palin wants to stop funding sexual education in schools. Sarah Palin is against women having control of their own reproductive rights. Sarah Palin’s local government charged victims of rape for the rape kits used to collect evidence to bring charages against the people who raped them. Sarah Palin is actively working to undermine the many many hard-won rights that women have struggled to achieve. Sarah Palin apparently thinks that women don’t deserve the same rights and considerations that men deserve, and thinks that women are incapable of making informed, responsible choices about their bodies. 

Not all women have a mommy and daddy who can step in to take care of them. Not all women have a mommy and a daddy who can provide them with a husband to take care of them. Not all woman want to be treated forever as children, in the care of their parents, their husbands, their government. Not all women want their choices, their autonomy, stripped from them.

It’s not surprising that McCain, who has actively worked against basic sexual and human rights for women and homosexuals has picked someone like Palin. It’s sickening how many people applaud her. She’s worked hard to get where she is, yes. I respect that. But she’s done so at the expense of other women, and the young people following her. She’s spitting in the face of every woman who fought to be considered not property, who fought to be able to work outside the house, who fight still to get equal pay for equal work and who fight for things like restraining orders being actively enforced, men who commit domestic violence being actually prosecuted, men who commit rape being actually charged for their crimes. She stands on the backs of those women, who fought for her to be able to stand where she stands now, and she spits on them.

Bristol Palin is lucky that when she’s in a time of need her family is there for her. But I wish she had options and had been able to make choices on her own, instead of having them thrust upon her by people who think they know better than she does.

Blog post copyright Brigid Keely Barjaktarevic. Originally posted at Words Words Words Art. If you enjoy this blog, check out my parenting blog at Now Showing!.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.