I can’t think of another time when I’ve endured over 115 degree temperatures consistently for three months straight. In the haze of this Groundhog Day we keep waking up to I can hardly believe it but it’s the kickoff of football season, my daughter started her first year of high school, and there’s only two more months left before we vote for a new President.
A little more than a week ago John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his surprise Presidential running mate which days later lead to the even more surprising disclosure that her seventeen year old daughter was pregnant. The controversy, if you want to call it that, didn’t seem to diminish the adrenalin shot that her nomination gave McCain’s campaign or change the way her nomination galvanized the social conservative base of the Religious Right within the Republican Party, and the fact that Governor Palin decided not to have an abortion when during pregnancy she learned that her youngest son would have Down syndrome made it clear, to the delight of the Religious Right, that she walked the talk of her Pro Life convictions. But as I listened to news coverage of the Republican National Convention last week and heard a comment made by a woman responding to the question, “What if Sarah Palin were a Democrat? How would Republicans have reacted to her nomination?” I was disturbed when this woman damningly declared, “If [Palin] was a Democrat she would have had an abortion!”
I’m a registered Democrat. I fathered my daughter at age 17, and I myself am essentially the product of a rape. If a person is a Democrat, and thus more likely to be Pro Choice, it’s not fair to assume they would undoubtedly have an abortion when they become pregnant under unwelcome circumstances. Such a position is negligible and trivializes the very difficult and agonizing decisions people are faced with when abortion does become an option in their lives. Pro Choice means having the right to choose and if one chooses to give birth under any circumstances that gives them no right to condemn, or legislate against, those who choose the opposite. The fact that ninety percent of all women abort their pregnancies when they find out their child will have Down syndrome means either female Democrats are cursed with a disproportionate chance of having a child with the chromosomal disorder or not all female Republicans are exactly Pro Life.
The question of abortion produces deeply personal answers and to weigh such resolutions upon the character of an individual is a matter of an equally personal understanding of one’s own character. Evangelicals hold dear the values of confession, forgiveness and redemption. But when prominent figures in their political camp make such comments as the one I mentioned earlier it becomes clear they’ve missed the point when it was written in Luke 6:37 “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged. Condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned. Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.” – And what ever happened to the separation of church and state? It should be a warning that Evangelicals and Republicans open the door of hypocrisy when they allow their religious assertions to affect our public policy and yet grumble because Iraq’s government established in their constitution the basis of their laws to be derived from the Holy Koran.
I wish Bristol Palin the best of luck because I know having a child at a young age brings its own set of unique challenges. She is fortunate to have a wealthy and supportive family and she should take such advantage as energy to thrive in her own future and give her child the chance at a better life even than her own because without those advantages, given the political enterprises of her mother, John McCain, the Republican Party, and the prospect of their victory in November, Bristol’s ability to afford her child that American Dream would become far more unlikely.
Rationally, the decisions made by Sarah Palin and her daughter Brisol, regarding their reproductive organs are non-issues. But I’m not sure most would agree with that. Putting all that aside, I’m left looking at John McCain’s campaign riding the wave of Governor Palin’s new political celebrity and thinking to myself now it’s really Sarah Palin’s Vice Presidential Campaign running against Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign. That’s weak. To quote another woman at the RNC, “Sarah Palin is the rocket fuel, but John McCain is the rocket.” Weak! The Republicans are playing poker when the Democrats appear to be dealing with real issues. I’ll admit I’m biased but what are you gonna’ do? G’OBAMA!
