Legal Commentary

Greetings from Milwaukee. FoP Ekow Yankah (Cardozo) writes in with the following post:

The news of 17 year old Bristol Palin?s pregnancy has been immediately met with calls by people across the political spectrum to respect the privacy of the Palin family and resist using this as a political tool.  The statements, from Obama himself to the Republican and social conservative blocs, have been nearly uniform and as far as I can see, highly effective.  (I will ignore, for the moment, my deep suspicion that if a Democratic candidate?s daughter were pregnant at 17 ? much less a picture of a black, Democratic candidate ? that the conservative voices would be so respectful.)

I am largely in agreement with the prevailing sentiment.  The life of young Bristol Palin ought not be reduced to prurient entertainment value and God bless the young lady in her impending motherhood.  And it goes without saying that unplanned joys can be great joys indeed.  All told, Bristol Palin strikes me as quite lucky in that she has, by all appearances, a loving, supportive and very capable family to support her. 

Nonetheless, I do think one legitimate issue arises out of this event. 

As Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin has, in keeping with her party, steadfastly denied support for comprehensive sex education.  (She has publically said she refused to support ?explicit? sex education.)  The Republican party under Bush has made a mixture of faith-based abstinence the center of its sex-educations policy.  Now the world thrusts an example of a young woman from an educated family of faith who has an apparently unplanned pregnancy.  Nor is this a case of my using anecdote as data; the current best evidence available shows that abstinence-based programs and the lack of comprehensive sex-education is an absolute failure, at best delaying sexual activity for a short period but greatly increasing unsafe sex practices.  (As a modest friend of mine surprisingly put it, this is what 17 year olds are built to do.)  It is fair enough for us to inspect Governor Palin?s record on this issue specifically as well as worry about the general disdain that Republicans have shown in recent years for using the best evidence available to guide our policies.

When conservatives (or perhaps people) are caught on the wrong side of an issue, I am often frustrated by their switching sides.  When Nancy Reagan began supporting stem-cell research due to her husband?s illness, I was infuriated.  Were those who had suffered from many diseases before Ronald Reagan not someone else?s equally loved husband or father? Nonetheless, it is better this than to cling to fundamentally wrong ideas.  After all, not all young mothers will have the support and resources that happily surround Bristol Palin.  For all the calls to not thrust her into the spot light, my worry is precisely that the next young woman who has an unplanned pregnancy will not be a Governor?s daughter.