Bristol Palin, the 17-year-old daughter of GOP Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, is pregnant. The baby is due sometime in December. Her parents have issued a statement saying that the young Ms. Palin will soon marry the baby’s father, who is only identified by his first name, Levi. The McCain campaign? They say that John McCain knew about the pregnancy, and that Sarah Palin was thoroughly vetted by his subordinates before he chose to add her to the ticket.
Bullshit. Of course, Bristol Palin’s pregnancy has nothing to do with the presidential race . . . except that she’s a kid who’s about to give birth to a kid. The poor girl is not even old enough to vote for her mother, but she’s apparently old enough to pick a husband and take care of a baby. When she found that she was pregnant, what options did Bristol Palin have? Her mother is a high-profile, anti-choice, religious conservative. Could she have deferred motherhood? Could she have opted to remain single? Somehow, I doubt it, and that’s too bad. I’ve never seen the point in confounding one perilous situation, teen pregnancy, with another, teen marriage. Raising a child is hard enough. Figuring out how to be married? That’s quite another, and it’s not easy no matter how old you are.
Why is any of this relevant? Why bother to talk about it? Certainly not to heap more coals on Bristol Palin’s head. But as we consider electing a hard right President and Vice President, we need to think about what we want for our own children. Abstinence-only sex education? We know that doesn’t work. A Supreme Court stacked with anti-choice justices? Overturning Roe vs. Wade won’t put an end to abortion; it will drive abortion underground, and we’ll go back to the days when desperate women took desperate measures.
When I was 17, I graduated from high school. The hardest choice I had to face was whether to go to North Carolina State University or UNC at Chapel Hill. Teenager that I was, I decided on the basis of where most of my friends were going. That seemed of paramount importance along with who I’d room with, who I’d take classes with, and who I’d meet for lunch. My spouse of choice at 17? He was gorgeous, smart, and funny. He also came out of the closet around the same time I did, about five years later. Equally scary is the fact that at 17 I thought Wham! was the band of the 20th Century, and I was willing to fight for that view against all comers, meaning fans of The Police, The Eurythmics, and Flock of Seagulls.
There is nothing I did at 17 the consequences of which I’d want to be living with today. That is not to say that if I’d had a child, I’d have regretted it. That’s not how regret works. The point is that 17 is no age to be promising to love and honor until death do you part. It’s not an age that lends itself to seeing particularly far into the future. At 17, it’s hard enough to understand the present.
