(no subject)

In some ways, I don't think it's fair to hold Bristol Palin's pregnancy up as an emblem of her mother's backwards sex-ed policy. That bump is between Bristol and her baby daddy, and I can only imagine the poor kid is already experiencing enough shame and misery without being dragged into the spotlight and held up as an indictment of willful ignorance.

But really, I despise abstinence-only education so very much, a part of me is happy to indulge in a spiteful smirk. Of all the violence inflicted upon a woman's body, the witholding of vital health information is the most reprehensible. Ignorance, lack of education, and misinformation were used to keep women subjugated for centuries already and I for one am done with that bullshit. While I myself am passionately pro-choice, I can empathize with a pro-life position; but I can't even imagine a position where you would keep girls so in the dark they haven't the tools needed to avoid that situation in the first place. Here is a piece of information that might be helpful to policy makers: teenagers are willful, and simply telling them not to do something typically does not yield great results.