Bye Bye Abstinence Only

Yesterday, Bristol Palin was all over the media talking about her own teen pregnancy and that prevention is best. Though she focused on abstinence, she acknowledged teens need to know about birth control.

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Today, the president’s budget (.pdf) says in clear terms that the U.S. government won’t be wasting our tax money on abstinence only ineffective sex non-education any more if he has anything to do with it. Who would have thought that conservative abstinence-only proponent Gov. Sarah Palin’s splash onto the political landscape would have helped created the impetus for this sweeping policy change? This is what makes politics so eternally fun! Here’s the relevant language from the budget-now we have to keep the pressure on Congress to follow suit:

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Bristol, Honey, This Is Just the Beginning

Sex and relationship conflict always give the morning news a little sizzle to go with the caffeine jolt.

Jill Miller Zimon over at writeslikeshetalks already said most of what I was thinking this morning as I watched media reports of the breakup of Bristol Palin and her boyfriend-fiancé-baby daddy, Levi Johnston:

Frankly, I think the only one who should be asked questions and be allowed to say, “no comment” is Bristol herself. She is 18, she is a single mother and it’s her life. Questions to Palin should go only to her existence as Bristol’s mother and either she is going to comment on that or not. I’m not even happy that she’s being asked about the subject at all – leave them all alone as far as I’m concerned. True, she kicked the door wide open during the campaign, but the Bristol-Greta interview demonstrated that Bristol is at least making some decisions, it seems.

Sigh.

I’d love to have an epistemological conversation with Sarah Palin about the word, “choice,” even knowing her whole thing about God opening doors, or not.

On the plus side, both Bristol and Sarah have now acknowledged that perhaps abstinence isn’t the 100% foolproof birth control method it’s cracked up to be. Because like all methods, it only works when it’s actually used.

However, I doubt that media attention will disappear from Bristol and baby Tripp for quite some time, at least as long as Sarah Palin is in the political limelight where she seems determined to stay to the chagrin of many in the party that used and abused her during McCain-Palin’s failed presidential campaign.

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What I Really Said About Bristol

Anti-choice blogs have been on a rampage, slamming me over and over with allegations neither accurate nor true. I’m quite accustomed to their techniques of misleading readers in an attempt to persuade by histrionics and lies if truth doesn’t work. So I’m not about to waste my time in a food fight with them. On…

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