By BRITT DUFFY ’12
Staff Writer
In an article I wrote last fall, I defended Bristol Palin’s choice to keep her baby and to do so privately. However, her recent appearances on several morning talk shows have proven that her plan is not to avoid the limelight, but rather to thrust herself into it. Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter, who recently gave birth, has now emerged as the new abstinence spokeswoman for the Candies Foundation.
This choice has been criticized by many as a political ploy, just as her choice to go through with the pregnancy was believed to be on behalf of her mother’s political career. Whether this is true or not, I think that her actions do the opposite of what Bristol supposedly intended to achieve through her new role with the Candies Foundation. If anything, her seemingly non-existent hardship will be glorified by the fame that she has received from being an unwed mother.
What makes the situation even more deplorable is that she’s preaching abstinence when she should perhaps be supporting and encouraging safe sex. I really do not believe that abstinence is an effective way of dealing with teenage pregnancy, and Bristol Palin seems to be the perfect example of that. She grew up in a right-wing, conservative household with a politically-active mother. Do you think she wasn’t given the abstinence speech on numerous occasions? And yet, it didn’t seem to stop her from becoming sexually active. The only example that Bristol Palin can be compared to is why abstinence-only education fails and should not be the focus of teaching young people how to avoid teenage pregnancy.
As I said before, I initially defended Bristol for her actions but I now find her choice to become an abstinence spokeswoman hypocritical. Her attempts to silence discussion of protected sex will only result in more people with a predicament similar to the one in which she found herself. I realize that as the daughter of Sarah Palin she can not exactly go around promoting Planned Parenthood, but if nothing else, she should avoid making public statements in support of abstinence.
Maybe it’s just my own cynicism that made me wonder whether choosing Bristol Palin as the new Candies Foundation spokesperson was a joke. But then again, if we are really going to look at the situation from a puritanical viewpoint, I would have to question why Hester Prynne would be chosen as the poster-child for good morals.