Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

This is a topic that’s not gonna get a lot of play from the Obama camp. People would call bringing a 17-year-old pregnant girl into a political debate just mean. I don’t care; I think it needs to be discussed because Bristol Palin’s situation launches a fiery hot cannonball right into the heart of Sarah Palin’s social policy: Abstinence training doesn’t work.

Sarah Palin will possibly be our vice president and her policy on teen sex is abstinence, which is no policy. Condoms, diaphragms and birth control pills are not the devil’s work. To not educate your kids to practice safe sex is to encourage them to have unsafe sex. That is not a message I want our second highest governing official passing to my kids.

This is the same ideological turd our current government took into the African AIDS crisis, suggesting Africans could cure their AIDS plague with some good old fashioned abstinence training. Not condoms or other safe sex devices, just sweet chaste abstinence. Thank goodness we finally sent Africans some rubbers or else we wouldn’t be seeing a drop in the numbers of newly infected.

But what about our children’s precious minds? If we talk frankly to them about sex and even provide them with protection they will become ruined people, sexual deviants of the highest order. They’ll transform into beings so brutally, nastily sexualized that their actions will make unicorns cry, right? Well listening to the radio the other day, I heard the words of a Republican delegate praising the Palin’s composure during this delicate time for their daughter. The woman said, “I think the situation with her daughter just makes her one of us. She’s got problems like any mum: you tell your kids what to do, but kids will do what they do.” Um, thank you. Kids will do what they do and if you want to stick your head into the sand that is “abstinence only” training, then you won’t be able to see your kids running around having unprotected sex. Persistent ignorance is not good child rearing. I am not saying it is travesty that some 17-year-old got knocked up. What is a travesty is a 17-year-old running around having unprotected sex, in which there are far greater dangers than pregnancy looming, just because mummy and daddy believe teaching smart responsible sex is like offering your kid an apple from the tree of knowledge. It’s a slap in the face of human nature and responsible parenting. Please someone tell me just one instance, any instance, in which choosing to be ignorant saved the day.

Teaching abstinence is fine, if it’s a piece of the puzzle, not the only option. There must be some abstinence only proponents out there. Tell me I’m wrong. Please explain to me how abstinence only works, show me the numbers. Show me how being honest and open with your kids ruins them, because I need to know I am not just shouting into a void. So what do YOU think???