And she would know:

81 replies on “Bristol Palin: Abstinence Education “Not Realistic””

  2. @51,
    naw I was overly serious, not often a positive trait on slog.
    That’s the problem with nameless, faceless, emotionless posts, no one knows who’s being serious, who’s being flippant, and who’s being a dick.

  3. O noes Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward @39 & @43 u haz uncovrd my secret shame that Ize mention 500 times on my blog. Now wat canz I do agenst your spexial xtra massive ad homineminemz?

  4. I appreciate the fact that Bristol was honest by admitting that abstinence is unrealistic, but then again, she probably was well aware that if she preached abstinence then should would be considered a hypocrite.

    Now about abstinence, I think it should still be taught alongside contraceptives. Being taught that waiting for that special someone is an okay thing to do helps with knowing while all your peers might be doing it, it’s okay if you’re not. Another thing is that kids need to learn self value (or at least that’s how I felt) and that there’s no rush to have sex. At the same time, the realistic view of “someday you will have sex and here’s how to protect yourself…” is desperately needed.

    I was lucky to have a mom who taught me that waiting until marriage was an admirable goal, but not a very realistic goal. She told me that if I ever needed a condom or the pill that she would help me and be supportive. I grew up in rural, conservative western Maryland with a school system that had an abstinence only policy (we were told about condoms but never taught how to use them!), so it was a serious blessing to have a mom who is liberal and a social worker.

    Back to the Bristol Palin interview, something I found interesting was how she talked about “her choice” to have the baby. I wish that her mother would realize that anyone who is pro-choice would be supportive of her daughter’s choice whether it was to keep the child or to get an abortion. Assuming Bristol was telling the truth that having her child was her own choice, she gets a little respect from me.

  8. Would a few quotes be too much to ask? That interview was impossibly tedious, if Bristol said anything about abstinence education I completely missed it.

  9. perhaps as we head into more polluted times, it will become too impractical to have children late, and the best way to have healthy babies will be to let the teenagers breed. if our whole society were re-structured for this, with gma and gpa and aunties doing the work, like in bristol’s case, while she goes forth in the world and attempts to get a clue and a degree, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. we need to be flxible in our thinking.

  11. Can we also just mention the inherent bad quality of that woman’s interviewing skills? Her speaking was making me cringe as much as listening to that teen.

  12. Remarkable if only because she would probably identify herself as “pro-life,” despite insisting that it was her own “choice” to “keep” the child. The abstinence remarks at the end of the interview are not nearly so interesting to me as the evidence of a barely covered conflict between her (and by extension her mother’s) “independent Alaskan” ideology and her “good Christian” ideology.

  13. 6: that’s exactly what i was taught in my comprehensive sex education courses in high school and middle school. they also knew that most people (read: most kids in that room) don’t wait until marriage and that we deserve to know everything about sexual health. Many years and partners later I am still pregnancy and STI free…and very, very satisfied. The point is, I don’t feel like a lot of proponents of abstinence only education don’t believe that comprehensive programs mention abstinence at all. In fact, abstinence is stressed to the MAX in Washington schools, I was always taught that it is the best and safest option. I think that there are many, many occasions in everyones life, though, where the safest option isn’t always the best one.

    I would also like to point out that one of the tragic realities of our world is that sex doesn’t only happen when we want it to. Birth control, emergency contraceptives and abortion care don’t just exist for the sake of our informed decisions, they are there for women who weren’t given a choice, as well.

  14. Most people who “practice” abstinence aren’t doing it by choice. It’s called being young and awkward, both socially and physically.

  15. How would you like to be this kid, grow up, and see your mother talking like an idiot on national television about how she wished this hadn’t happened for another ten years, etc? And then to wonder why his mother says, “like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like,” over and over again.

  16. I have worked for an NGO that promoted family planning in developing countries. One emphasis was on encouraging youth to delay the age of first sexual contact, which makes a lot more sense than “abstinence only.”

    Thanks to my brother for giving me “Our Bodies, Ourselves” when I was about 14, against my mother’s wishes. It helped me to wait until I was readiER (don’t know if anyone can ever be completely emotionally ready) and make more intelligent decisions about sex.

  17. Abstinence works to prevent pregnancy and STDs…Just like fasting prevents obesity, and food borne illnesses. All you have to do to get a feeding tube, with sterilized, pasteurized, but nutritionally balanced gruel. It’s much safer than eating solid food.

    We are sexual beings. They only way abstinence only sex education will work is if you install chastity belts on these kids. Otherwise, they have sex just as much as kids with a real sex ed programs Only, the kids who learn about condoms and other contraceptives actually know how to protect themselves.

  18. @8: This is why actual medical science uses different words for the two concepts: Efficacy is the capcity of an intervention to produce an effect; effectiveness is the degree to which an intervention produces an effect in the real world.

    Thus, abstinence is 100% efficacious, but not 100% effective. Similarly, the 1-year efficacy of oral contraceptive use at preventing pregnancy is 99.7%, but the effectiveness is only 92% – which is still a hell of a lot high than the 55% quoted by the troll – I’m not sure where he’s getting that figure from.

  20. HELLO! When is everybody going to wake up to the glaring hyposcrisy on the part of the the GOP; “Bristol made the choice to keep her child.”
    Given the platform of the GOP for the last 25 or so years, that would mean that the offspring of GOP pols are entitled to rights that would be legislated against or struck down in court for the rest of the population.
    I do feel for the young lady though. She’s a good kid, taking on a big responsibility and holding it all together. It’s a shame that she has to make herself available to the MSM (and probably the GOP hate machine) for these interviews to keep her mother’s name in the spotlight.

  22. 71
    Actually not.
    In my job at the funeral home I hump the dead bodies and I have managed to infect several with syphilis. Mind you, I’m not bragging or anything.

  23. Bristol: “I would wait 10 years.”

    Interviewer: “Why?”

    That is a terrible follow up question. The question I want to ask is: “What would you wait 10 years to do?” Wait 10 years to have sex? Is it realistic to expect people to have sex for the first time in their late 20’s? Or is Bristol trying to tell us that she wished she’d aborted the baby?

    Or does Bristol just not know what she’s talking about and instead is spouting off a bunch of cliched answers she’s really never thought about?

  24. LOL @ the parents who think their kids aren’t having sex.
    You fools.
    My Catholic parents think their abstinence education is working, but that’s just because my friends Alesse and Trojan ensures that nothing happens to make them think otherwise 😉

  25. I wish she had asked Bristol if she ever considered giving the kid up for adoption. That would have been the most loving thing to do – provide the kid with a family that is ready for him and has the means to properly care for him.

  26. Why are some people so quick to attack abstinence and/or religious beliefs? Absitnence only education may be a flawed stategy, but treating sexual abstinence as something impossible and unusual is also just as bad. I am Christian, and a college senior who has chosen to save sex until marriage. I have many friends who have decided to do the same, so it’s not as rare as some of you would like to think. Though, I also have friends who don’t understand why someone would want to wait because “everyone is doing it” or some other lame reason like that. Maybe if some teens didn’t have to face so much opposition and/or attacks from others about thier choice to be abstinent, there would be less rampant pregnancies and STDs in the US today.

  27. She sounded very pretty and young and she seems to be happy in her motherhood. The only thing I don’t appreciate is that she was involved into that stupid abstinence campaign. I think she’d better popularize safe sex…

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