NEW YORK—You don't need a rich imagination to picture the scene. In the Alaska governor's mansion, a pair of parents and their visibly pregnant teenage daughter sit on a dead bear sprawled across a couch they had to have shipped because there isn't an Ethan Allen in Anchorage. On a second sofa, on the opposite side of a glass coffee table festooned by the exoskeleton of a giant crab, fidget a second set of parents and their son, aka the Extremely Nervous Boyfriend. Heads of dead animals line the walls.
"Levi, Levi, Levi." The governor pauses, reveling in the others' discomfort. Moments like this are how she earned the sobriquet Barracuda.
She leans in. "You little s---. You knocked up my daughter. Do you know how close your little sexcapade came to screwing up my plan for global domination? Now you're going to do the right thing."
A few days later, Extremely Nervous Boyfriend blinks under the bright lights of a stage in St. Paul, Minn., elevated to the even more challenging role of America's Unhappiest 18-Year-Old. I met a guy the night before he was executed. Levi Johnston had the same look in his eyes.
Sarracuda's 17-year-old fry was nearly as miserable.
"Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby," the McCain-Palin campaign claimed in its press release. Did the daughter of the mother of all anti-choice governors really have a choice? Well ...
By pro-life standards, Sarracuda is an extremist. Parting ways with five out of six Americans, she's against abortion even in cases of rape and incest. For Bristol, doing the "right thing"—carrying the baby to term, getting married, being paraded across 37 million TV sets—was the path of least resistance.
In reality, Bristol is doing the wrong thing. She's having the kid. She's marrying the father. Three lives will likely be destroyed.
Even pro-choice liberals are afraid to speak the truth: teen marriage and parenthood are disasters for everyone concerned. I have serious problems with well-off married couples who decide to terminate their pregnancies for frivolous reasons. Conversely, abortion ought to be mandatory for people under 18. Twenty-five would be better. Teen marriage should be banned.
Anyone who went to high school knew a student couple where the girl became pregnant. What the unlucky couple decided to do about it would determine their future. The girls who had abortions went on with their lives. They graduated from high school and, if they were headed that way before the dipstick turned pink, continued with college and careers and all the other stuff young people are supposed to go on to do.
Then there were the girls who kept their babies. With few exceptions—I've never heard of any, but I imagine they exist—it was the wrong decision. Their lives were ruined. Many never graduated from high school, much less college. Their futures were grim: low educational attainment doomed them to dead-end jobs in the low-wage service sector. Married too young and under pressure, most wound up divorced. Many never remarried, or married stepfathers who barely tolerated their children. Their kids, raised in poverty in families led by single, stressed-out young moms, were themselves likely to repeat the cycle of downward mobility by getting pregnant in their teens.
Obviously, there are exceptions: teen pregnancies leading to lifelong partnerships with high school sweethearts, loving stepparents, daughters of 15-year-old parents making $1 million a year. But in most cases, studies confirm the anecdotal evidence. Having kids and getting married too young are a prescription for unhappiness.
Teen moms are more than twice as likely to drop out of high school. "The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy reports that less than 40 percent of women who have a child before the age of 18 will graduate from high school, compared to a high school graduate rate of 75 percent for those who delay parenthood until their early 20s," law professors June Carbone and Noami Cahn wrote in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Teen brides are 10 times more likely to plunge into poverty. In 2005 University of Rochester economist Gordon Dahl found that "a woman who marries young is 28 percentage points more likely to live in poverty when she is older." A 1993 study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation determined that only 8 percent of women who finished high school, married before having a child, and married after age 20 became poor. Seventy-nine percent of women who didn't do these things wound up poor.
As the daughter of a possible future president, Bristol Palin probably won't be poor. (Although prominent figures, like Bill Cosby and Alan Keyes, do disown their children.) Even setting aside Levi's famous MySpace page ("I don't want kids"), his pending marriage to Bristol is probably doomed.
When teenage girls become pregnant, eight out of 10 of the fathers never marry them. One can hardly blame the runaway grooms, considering the probable outcomes. A 2002 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicates that 59 percent of couples who marry before age 18 split up within 15 years. But waiting a few years markedly increases a marriage's odds: 64 percent of couples who get hitched after age 20 are still married 15 years later.
I'll say it again: There are exceptions to every rule. Guys smoke two packs a day and live be to be 100. I've driven 115 mph and I'm still here. But neither smoking nor speeding are smart choices. One should be illegal; the other is. Society sets rules and regulations and laws to cover common situations and typical outcomes. On the matter of teen pregnancy and marriage, the typical outcome is terrible.
Those who keep silent about Levi and Bristol's bad decisions—especially those marketing them as examples to be emulated—are doing society a disservice. Levi and Bristol are about to compound one tragedy (unplanned teen pregnancy) with another (involuntary marriage). They're setting a terrible example for other teenagers who will find themselves in their situation.
Congress should act to protect these kids from themselves—ban teen marriage, mandate teen abortion.
Ted Rall is the author of the book Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?, an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.
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You have quantified relationships by how long they last. The quality of a relationship is more important. Nowadays there is no real reason to have the same partner till you die. Good parenting comes from 2 loving parents who collaborate for their children's well-being. Long relationships are not necessarily healthy. Today's boyfriend/girlfriend can very well become tomorrow's close friend. Why do you think that a relationship that does not last 15 year is not a success? How can you judge that?
Dear Boise Weekly, These my earthly brothers is two extremely well-controversed topics that are fought over time and time again in this century, as much as you type it or write it, many people will decide to farse it and try to demote it. It is easy to criticize and bring people lower and constantly bombard people with statements to make them fail because these heinous writers decide to denounce them. I had recently discovered on one person the political position he was in this election. He was for Obama, and strong against anyone else, namely Green Party is nothing but a group of pansies and McCain is too old to run, and Sarah Palin has too many home troubles. He tried to make me recognize that Obama didn't need experience for such a position. Abraham Lincoln had 2 years of experience before he became president and look how good of a job he did! He ended the civil war right? But wasn't he republican and it was his views as a republican who got us out of the civil war? By all means, if you don't want to come and kill me in the night please close this message now. But I believe if your were polite as I hope you are and sensible enough to listen to contrasting thoughts, You will read mine own. Look folks, I know all you want in your greedy little minds is to destroy and burden others with the pressure of media and society just to get ratings and people who can't think very well for themselves to leech into their brains the senseless behavior that you don't appreciate human life the way I do, and my way is a good way. Take your standings on capital punishment, this is very different from abortion isn't it? Not necessarily in your point of view. One must always know that the life of a murderous criminal is never innocent. He grew up with the laws of the land and he should know that it is UNACCEPTABLE to take another's life and you have to know that it is not insanity at some times; Pasco, WA, there was a case for the murder of a local PE teacher, what was the murder you ask? It was two men that were to kill him for gang initiation. This was no insanity just as well as emotionally challenged people hurt themselves for enjoyment and smoke pot since they have no happiness. You can't accuse those young impressionable teens for their use of drugs and self-mutilation a form of insanity, could you? I couldn't. But let's look at the abortion side of this. Isn't this exactly what is the issue here? Capital-punishment for babies? You have a man who has no right to live due to the lives he's taken and ruined (namely family members and the like) you say he has every right to redemption. Redemption for whom, should you ask him to just go to the people he's offended and just say sorry? So why should he have his name cleared when someone who is about to be born has no name to write sin upon? Abortion in itself is a huge problem. Take this situation, a small baby who could come out at any time it needs to to join his new world and to grow and become rich and famous and live by the fruit of his labors for the rest of his simplistic life that he could of had instead inject a needle (which by you all know is used in the same format as Capital Punishment) into his skull and have him saturated to nothing and then have the new hope for the future be sucked out in a vacuum. This my fellow writers is anethemic and evil and 5000% more barbaric as capital punishment. I wish that you could see in your hearts and in your minds that this practice profits nothing but money for the soulless doctor who offered a killing practice. There are instances where abortion could be managed, say rape or incest, a woman should not have to endure the 6 months of tragedy that a man she knew not give her. Then shall "Planned Parenthood," or "Babies Die Here," run its course. Abortion could be used for that. But if a sustained couple are foolish enough to damage their lives in having unprotected sex and have a child should have no right to abort it from this world because the baby was their fault! PUT IT UP FOR ADOPTION TO A LOVING AND CARING, VERY STABLE, AND VERY KIND COUPLE WHO WOULD TAKE IT! Or even better, stay abstinant. Don't you know that the only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to think for ourselves and the ability to discern which is a good decision. I'm sorry but pre-marital sex should be avoided because teens can't handle those emotions. Getting to my final topic it is Sarah Palin. I DON'T care about her PRIVATE life in which you seem so eager to heartlessly invade. If you so love criminals lives and not the hopes and dreams of aborted children and running candidates, what say about you as a person, if you care about the Human Race care about the ones who will try to contribute to society, contribute to them, who have hopes and offer good-will to the continuation of freedom and liberty and everything this country stands on. Don't put your faith in the ones who attempted to destroy Human life and to hamper people to lower impossibility to helplessness. Sarah Palin has every right to withold from you the concepts of her family life, and you invade her home, tempt her son, and accuse her own priviledges to base and farse accusations such as global domination that you have no right to say, for you have no proof! Looking at her family, you can see a parallel of other successful people. Who are you to say she is incompetent. When Sarah Palin attacks your farsical and low authority and experience that Barack Obama has, all you could do is attack her own family. That is weak and low for someone who considers himself/herself intelligent when you think of crude backsayings and sly remarks that are supposed to bring people down. To treat her the way you treat her and her daughter would be like looking up her daughter's skirt and checking to see if the baby is actually there. How can you treat people like this. If you are the Americans this country needs for its global competence then be that man that will rise up and stop any aggression that would bring this country down.
Where do you think this is? CHINA! Do you advocate murder for other stupid reasons as well? What about freedom? I will tell you something, I was married at 16, was NOT pregnant, and have been married to the same man, my high school sweet heart for 33 years. I had 3 children before I was 21 and they are happy well adjusted adults. Would you have "ordered" me to kill my babies! Over my dead body. I thank the Lord above you were not the one in charge when I was younger. Shame on you. What the Palin's do is THEIR business, no one elses. Stay out of other peoples lives when it comes to family. By the way ADOPTION is the best way for un-married kids but it is still a choice...
If you were the unborn child in the womb of a teenage girl, would you think being ripped apart was less of a travesty than figuring out adoption and how to deal with a certainly difficult life, but a LIFE? Would you rather be snuffed out that given a chance to use your voice, to sing, to dance, to fight, to feel, to cry, to laugh? Would you deny yourself from ever experiencing these things? And what of the girl? Would you honestly violate a teenage girl's ability to choose life? How is this stance pro-choice? Is it only pro-choice when one chooses death?
Ted seems to be starting on the wrong end of the problem. Teen pregnancy skyrocketed when sex education began being taught without any morality to back it up. Then, when teen pregnancy and STD's ran amuck all the kids got free condoms and told them to have safe sex. The adults said to our selves "they are going to have sex anyway to lets protect them." Ted is still trying to protect these "ignorant" children by forcing abortions on young girls. The fact is that abortion is one of the most horrific acts that a woman/girl can go through. Ted believes that after the abortion the girl just goes on with her life, greatful to be rid of the problem. The truth is that that abortion will be with her and apart of her for the rest of her life. She is already that baby's mom and at some level of intellect or in her heart she knows that. She will spend years suffereing from that abortion. Is this what Ted truely has in mind for these kids? Why not begin at the beginning. Teach them abstinance, teach them to value each other more than just someone to have sex with for entertainment, teach them that there are consequences that reach past this life and into eternity. Kids are smarter than we adults give them credit. Did Bristol do the wrong thing? What wrong are you talking about? Having premarital sex? I would agree that was a bad choice. But she did not compound the problem by making another choice that would have devistated her life, her families lives, the baby's father's life and everyone else connected to them. Bristol made the choice that will allow her to look herself in the mirror and say, I put my baby before myself--and that I have the utmost respect for that young woman/mommy. May God bless and protect her. donna
I think abortion is not an option..It is bad enough to take away the life of one innocent child..And yeah I guess we can have the congress pass a law about teen marriage..but never to take a life of an innocent..
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