Jill Porter: Bristol Palin's frightening 'distraction'
I BEG TO DIFFER with the scolds who are criticizing the media for focusing on Bristol Palin's out-of-wedlock pregnancy. And I beg to differ with pundits who claim that the controversy is a distraction from more important issues.
I BEG TO DIFFER with the scolds who are criticizing the media for focusing on Bristol Palin's out-of-wedlock pregnancy. And I beg to differ with pundits who claim that the controversy is a distraction from more important issues.
Because the uproar isn't about Bristol Palin.
It isn't about whether Sarah Palin failed as a mother; only insufferable right-wing partisans make those moral equations, and they're silenced by political considerations in this case.
It's about the fact that Gov.
Palin's ideology failed, that abstinence-only sex education failed even in her own family. It's about showering Bristol Palin with praise for making the choice to keep her baby, and denying the legitimacy of any other choice.
And while people may be tired of polemics about abortion, that's what this whole roiling mess is about.
That's hardly a distraction.
It's a reminder of what's at stake in this election.
Palin was picked over McCain's top choices of Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge precisely because of her extreme opinion on abortion, according to news reports.
The maverick Mr. McCain knew that either of those pro-choice men would cause open revolt among the Republican delegates at the convention.
So he kowtowed and nominated an apparently ill-vetted candidate with the perfect pedigree on reproductive rights - and little else going for her.
As Rebecca Traister wrote yesterday on Salon.com:
"This election cycle could turn from one that was electrifying and energizing for women into one that situates their political prospects firmly back in the feminized territory of sex scandals, babies and mothering.
"Women - the same women who may or may not have supported Hillary, and who are applauding McCain's supposedly go-girl choice of Palin as his veep - should be furious at the Republican nominee for ensuring that the history-making woman he tapped will be considered not on her intellectual or political merits, but on her reproductive ones."
We all knew that McCain's campaign was going to be about perpetuating the past, in his pro-Bush stances about the war in Iraq, taxes and other failed policies. And Palin's appointment to the ticket - a cynical, desperate ruse to appeal to women voters - is a vivid reminder of another part of the past that will be resurrected if the GOP wins.
Because she's pro-slavery.
She believes that women should be enslaved to their wombs, that they should risk their health rather than end a pregnancy that's unwanted or unwelcome or involves a deformed embryo.
She believes that women should be enslaved by the whims of some vile men - be forced to carry to term a fetus implanted by a rapist or a relative who forced her into an incestuous relationship.
She believes that women should be enslaved by the government, which should dictate the most pivotal decision of her life: whether and when and under what circumstances to have children. The only exception that Palin supports to an abortion ban is "a doctor's determination that the mother's life would end if the pregnancy continued." How compassionate.
Sure, Americans are focused on other issues.
A recent Gallup Poll showed that abortion is of little interest these days to voters, who list their priorities as the economy, Iraq, gas prices, health care, terrorism and illegal immigration, in that order.
Only 1 percent of Americans said that abortion was an important issue to them in the presidential campaign. The Palin nomination just might change that. As well it should.
Because the Republicans' retrograde posture on abortion, stem-cell research and other far-reaching social issues will be embedded in our culture for the foreseeable future if a McCain/Palin administration gets a Supreme Court appointment - which it will.
Roe v. Wade will be overturned, science will continue to be subjugated to ideology and women will return to second-class status. And if the controversy over Bristol Palin's pregnancy reminds us of that, then I welcome the distraction. *
E-mail porterj@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5850. For recent columns: