DADvocate

Kos turns Bristol Palin's pregnancy into an issue of abstinence-only education.

Maybe one more abstinence-only supporting politicians will realize the limits of such an approach. Teens will do what they will do. It's obvious Bristol would've been better served with a discussion about safe sex. Instead, she's now facing a shotgun wedding to the baby's father.

If you follow the link Kos provides, you find a question/answer format sent to Alaska gubernatorial candidates. Palin's relevant response:

SP: I am pro-life. With the exception of a doctor’s determination that the mother’s life would end if the pregnancy continued. I believe that no matter what mistakes we make as a society, we cannot condone ending an innocent’s life.
SP: Yes. Parents should have the ultimate control over what their children are taught.
SP: Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support.
(The question was "Will you support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?" Rather broad, loaded question.)
SP: No, again, parents know better than government what is best for their children.

I don't know how Kos knows but evidently Kos has inside knowledge of conversations between Sarah and Bristol Palin.

It's obvious Bristol would've been better served with a discussion about safe sex. Instead, she's now facing a shotgun wedding to the baby's father.

As any intelligent person know, condoms break and the pill, in real life there is virtually no 100% effective method.

Perhaps, Bristol and her fiancee were using birth control in some form but it failed. But, I'm not Kos, I don't have access to this sort of insider information.

Unlike many lefties, I don't consider an unplanned pregnancy the end of the world even if it does interfere with my financial ability to buy lattes.

BTW - Does Daily Kos prevent some commenters from posting? I can't figure out how to leave a comment. Not that it really matters. I've commented there before but it's probably been over a year.

UPDATE - some comments from the Kos post:

• I think this is a disaster for Palin's image.
  
  (even assuming this is Bristol's first pregnancy).
• I believe this is Bristol's SECOND pregnancy. Look at her face, the same flushed / cholasma look.
• If only those kids had had the benefit of a properly administered sex education class then we wouldn't be having this morality play for our entertainment.
• if she had spent more time taking care of her family at home the way a "traditional wife and mother" should be doing, her daughter wouldn't have "got into trouble".
• I simply just love the "pro-lifers" especially when they drop their bombs on their own sorry-asses.
• It's also ironic that his name is Levi, and he couldn't keep it in his Levi blue jeans.
• Wait until America finds out that Bristol is actually the second coming of the Virgin Mary.
• Probably literally a shotgun wedding, from the looks of the Palin household. (I must admit I chuckled a little when I saw this one.)
• Sarah Palin is not only a mother also potentially a grandmother.
  "Liberal" blog rumor confirmed.
  Another yet unconfirmed rumor, is that her first son was conceived before marriage. Maybe it runs in the family.

It goes on nearly forever.

I have this self-revelation about the situation. When I was 19 my 17 year old girlfriend, whom I had been dating for over a year, became pregnant due to a broken condom. (Safe sex isn't always safe.) We married two months before our daughter was born and stayed married for 15 years. We endured some hardships but I don't regret any of them.

I worked my way through college, sometimes working full-time and going to school full-time. I eventually earned a M.S. degree. My liberal parents, who previously paying my college tuition, abandon all support. It was 10 months after the wedding before they gave us a combination Christmas/wedding present, a used sewing machine. To this day when I hear liberals in my family talk about selfishness and greed, I want to slap them silly.

My wife's conservative, and less affluent, parents gave us a house to live in rent free for 3 months while we got our feet on the ground. This was the beginning of the end of my liberal leanings.

Those making harsh judgments and crass jokes about Bristol's circumstances need to go look in the mirror until they realize they are no better. Bristol is fortunate to have a family that will be supportive.

UPDATE II - Good for Obama - "I have said before and I will repeat again: People's families are off limits," Obama said. "And people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics."