Let's don't beat around the bush. Sarah Palin is the Republican nominee for President. This is a serious embarrassment to the party and to the nation because Sarah Palin represents the stone age of reproductive health and rights. Still, it's important to realize that, as backwards as Palin's views on contraception and sex education may seem to educated liberals, they represent the status quo of American reproductive policy. Ignorance-only sex education and the unavailability of contraception and abortion have made the United States' collective maternity ward the laughing stock of the developed world.
As UNICEF put it in their 2001 report "TEENAGE BIRTHS IN RICH NATIONS" [PDF]:
The United States teenage birth rate of 52.1 is the highest in the developed world – and about four times the European Union average.
How moronic is our policy on sex education? Really, deeply moronic:
The UNICEF report will open your eyes to the epidemic of teen pregnancy in this country. It is well worth taking a few minutes to read it. Some of the startling conclusions in this report include:
- Women who become mothers in their teens are only half as likely as other women to complete their basic education.
- 26% of teenage mothers will live in a household with no employed adults, compared to 8% for other women.
- A whopping 45% of teenage mothers will spend their lives in the lowest quintile of income, compared to 21% of other women.
All of these things are four times more likely to happen in the USA than in Europe. The teen birth rate is higher, the birth rate among 15-17 year-olds is higher, and, of course, the teen abortion rate is higher. There are two times as many teen abortions in this country than there are total teen pregnancies in Belgium. Our hear-no-sex, see-no-sex, speak-no-sex education system leads not only to shocking levels of teen pregnancy, but inevitably to preventable teen abortions.
This is the type of life that Sarah Palin wants her daughters, and yours, to lead. She wants them to face a 4% chance of getting knocked up during their teens. She wants them to face a greatly increased chance of living as single parents, in poverty, for the rest of their lives. She wants them to suffer this way because her religion teaches her that sex is the original sin for which all women must bear the burden until the end of days. How screwed up is that?
Barack Obama laid out quite plainly in his convention speech his views on this matter. People might differ on the issue of abortion, but everyone can agree that preventing unwanted pregnancy is a worthy national goal. It is a goal that this country has been singularly unable to meet. Even as other wealthy countries have radically reduced their levels of teen pregnancy since 1970, in our country we have hardly reduced it at all. Obama promises to leave the culture wars behind and to lead the country to a more enlightened policy on sex education. Palin promises to keep us in the dark ages, where sex education is left to mythical talking serpents. That's a clear choice for American voters.
Republicans should be ashamed of this nomination, but we know better by now. Republicans know no shame. But as Democrats and voters, we should be very worried about this woman being put in a position to influence legislation and to nominate like-minded whackjobs to the Supreme Court. We cannot allow these weirdos to come to power, nor to stay in power.