gsh | the stupid, it burns!

Bristol Palin, daughter of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, went on "Good Morning America" to launch her new pastime as an ambassador for abstinence.

Anchor Christopher Cuomo pointed out that Palin's own personal history went against her abstinence-only message for teens. (Palin, 18, recently had a baby with former boyfriend Levi Johnston.) She became pregnant after she and Levi failed to use protection (something Johnston admitted on the "Tyra" show.)

Palin was less forthcoming on this issue than her ex. "Regardless of what I did personally, I just think that abstinence is the only way you can effectively, 100% foolproof way you can prevent pregnancy," she responded. Asked how she squared her own experiences with her new campaign, she added, "I'm not quite sure, I just want to go out there and promote abstinence and say, this is the safest choice. This is the choice that's going to prevent teen pregnancy and prevent a lot of heartache."

Look Briston, I realize you may never have had a course in statistics, but don't refer to something as being 100% foolproof *after* you have a kid due to playing sex games without using protection.

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margoeve.livejournal.com

But she didn't abstain. Obviously.

gsh

According to her, she abstained from sex. And she still has a kidlet.

tamarinne.livejournal.com

No... she failed to abstain.

Just like if you fail to use a condom, you can get preganant.

The difference is that if you always use a condom, you can still get pregnant (it's something like 98.5% effective, I think?)

If you always abstain, you cannot get pregnant.

The message that is being given to kids is that if you abstain from sex, you are 100% foolproof not to have a kid. So kids try to have as much fun as they can, while still "not having sex". Bristol and her bf were exactly there. She technically didn't have sex, but still has a kid. Yea, I agree condoms have about a percent failure rate. Brisol had a failure as well. But somehow we tread failure of a condom and failure of abstainance differently. Cause someone always says "but if she had actually abstained, it would have been 100%". That's like saying not having accidents is 100% sure way of not having accidents.

"not having accidents is 100% sure way of not having accidents." Hee.

It's actually kind of interesting, if you think about it - any birth control method has two failure rates, but we only ever talk about one. There's the failure rate if you use it properly (which is the one we hear about), but then there's the failure to use it properly. Abstinence has a much better failure rate for the first, but a much worse failure rate for the second (it's much easier to put on a condom than it is to abstain.)

We should talk to melebeth about popularizing the second failure rate. :)

Unfortunately this topic makes my blood pressure rise, and I have many more fun things I'd want to talk to Melebeth about. :) But I agree it is important.

melebeth

*nod* I actually generally talk about both sorts of failure - but what you're getting at is a third one... failure to use at all.

petrona.livejournal.com

Ok, I'm confused. How did she technically not have sex? She admitted to having sex, sometimes with condoms, sometimes not. What she failed to do was abstain. Which takes me to the irony of going around and saying how wonderful motherhood is but don't follow my example and have sex.

My understanding is that she and the bf were fooling around, but not having intercourse, and he ejaculated near/on her vagina, and she ended up pregnant. And lots of people do the Clintonian definitions of what sex is or isn't.

Oh! I had not heard that version. The boy himself admitted that they were having sex on several talk shows.

I don't buy it.

drcruel.livejournal.com

I don't either. There is a mathematical possibility that her boyfriend came right on top of her labia and she was open in just the right position and he has sperm like Michael Phelps, but in science the simplest answer is usually the best one and it's a lot simpler to assume they were knocking boots without any sort of protection.

It's the Christian way, isn't it? Don't teach your children about protection, then pretend they're not lying to you about sex-and that their ignorance keeps them safe. Unless she's just birthed the next Messiah, she's just another right-wing hypocrite, and it nauseates me that Christians see this as a validation of their idiotic positions on abstinence-only education.

Plus, I'll point out that if one of the Clinton teenagers had turned up pregnant, Christians would have been all over it: "Oh, look, see, this is what happens when you teach your children about condoms and not about Jesus; bad, immoral liberals, Hillary's not a dedicated mom...."