Bristol Palin announced on Thursday that she’s pregnant with her second child out of wedlock. Palin is an otherwise-private citizen who’s been in the media spotlight ever since the press developed an obsession with tearing down her mother, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
I only bring this up because Allie Jones of the perpetually-classless Gawker decided to exploit this sensitive news, which Bristol Palin suggests embarrasses her and her family and only made public to preempt some media vulture from digging it up first, with this headline: “Bristol Palin Makes Great Argument for Abortion in Baby Announcement.”
Palin writes:
“I know this has been, and will be, a huge disappointment to my family, to my close friends, and to many of you.”
Jones interprets:
“Yikes! It sounds like nobody, least of all Bristol, wants her to have this baby?”
Palin writes:
“Tripp, this new baby, and I will all be fine, because God is merciful.”
Jones sneers:
“Not so merciful, of course, to suggest that she has any choice in this matter.”
Bristol Palin has been a favorite target of pro-aborts ever since her first pregnancy, because they think it somehow exposes pro-lifers as hypocrites who are wrong about abortion being unnecessary and abstinence being realistic. None of that could be further from the truth.
Hypocrisy is willfully rejecting standards you hold others to; it does not mean you never fall short of standards you do believe in, or that those standards are worthless. As the saying goes, the plural of “anecdote” is not “data,” so the fact that Palin was not abstinent on two fateful occasions in no way negates the extensive research showing that abstinence education does reduce teen sex and pregnancy.
More importantly, Palin’s experience tells us nothing about the legitimacy of abortion. Yes, the Palin family is disappointed (just as disappointed, feminists, as they’d be in a male son fathering a child out of wedlock). Yes, single parenthood presents great challenges. No, none of that makes abortion a legitimate response.
Bristol herself has proven that by choosing life twice now, and by arguing for years that despite what would have been personally expedient for her, abortion is murder and selfishness cannot be an excuse for indulging the lie that children are objects to be destroyed and discarded on a whim—that “I deserve a happy, comfortable life, and if you get in the way, I can take away your right to live” is “just not right,” because “Every person has dignity because we’re all made by our Creator who loves us. And He has a plan for everyone’s life.”
Whatever else may be said of Bristol Palin, whatever the circumstances of her second pregnancy may have been, the fact remains that she is again responding to the consequences by living up to her principles. In doing so, she shows more grace and strength than Gawker and her other pro-abortion tormentors could ever muster.
