17 and PregnantSeptember 2, 2008;
Page A22 of Wall Street Journal
(
www.wsj.com)
Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her husband Todd confirmed yesterday that their 17-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant. In a statement issued by the McCain campaign, they said Bristol plans to have the baby and marry the father. Their daughter's pregnancy, the Palins added, "would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned."
All parents will empathize with the Palins' statement, no matter what advice they might give a daughter faced with an unplanned pregnancy. If there's one area of agreement across the pro-life, pro-choice divide, it's that the birth of a child is among life's biggest responsibilities. Common sense holds -- and all social science evidence supports -- that those responsibilities are more easily shouldered when a mother-to-be has completed her education and shares the burdens with a husband.
But life doesn't always play out that way. Nearly half of girls between the ages of 15 and 19 have had sex at least once, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, and some 750,000 become pregnant every year. The vast majority of teen pregnancies -- 82% -- are unplanned. Of those pregnancies, 29% end in abortion; 14% are miscarriages; and 57% result in live births.
The rate of abortion for older women is much lower -- 21% of pregnancies. The reasons teens give most frequently for having abortions are "concerns about how having a baby would change their lives, inability to afford a baby now and feeling insufficiently mature to raise a child."
Their daughter's pregnancy is a private matter for the Palin family, and the press corps has for the most part left the children of Presidential candidates alone. Barack Obama also deserves credit for saying yesterday that the subject would be "off limits" to his campaign. He went on to say that it "has no relevance to Governor Palin's performance as Governor or her potential performance as Vice President."
The latter point could use some elaboration. Discussion of Mrs. Palin's qualifications for the Vice Presidency is rightly focused on her professional accomplishments. But voters do assess the character of candidates, especially for high executive office, and for social conservatives in particular that inevitably includes how they conduct themselves on some private matters.
Social conservatives are already pointing to Mrs. Palin's support of her daughter's decision to have her baby as another example of how she lives by her pro-life beliefs. They had previously applauded her decision to give birth to her youngest child, who was born in April with Down syndrome. A very high percentage of babies with Down syndrome are aborted.
Whatever one thinks of Mrs. Palin's candidacy or of her pro-life views, every American can appreciate the difficulty of the personal decisions she and her family have had to make -- and admire the sight of a family that has the courage of its convictions.
