The Palin Family Album

Palin and the Party of ‘Change’

In defending the privacy of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Barack Obama has been the model of decency. “I think people’s families are off limits. And people’s children are especially off limits,” he observed after the media pounced on the story that Palin’s 17-year-old daughter Bristol was five-months pregnant.

But Obama was wrong about Bristol Palin and wrong about Trig, Sarah Palin’s 5-month-old Down syndrome child. Sarah Palin has already made both a part of the 2008 presidential debate—and the Democrats ignore her politicization of her family album at their peril. The zone of privacy that Sarah Palin wants for herself is not one that she is willing to extend to other women, and as a result of that decision, she has made her family fair political game.

Sarah Palin’s own choices about her family are personally admirable. Palin’s devotion to her Down syndrome son and her belief that “Trig will be a joy” are beyond question. She will certainly be a caring mother, and to argue that as a political candidate she will not have time for Trig is to impose a double standard on her. We would never ask if a male politician had time for his children.

The same respect is due to Palin for her support of her teenage daughter’s pregnancy. She absolutely means it when she says she is “proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby.” It is hard to imagine there wasn’t a lot of screaming in the Palin household when Bristol announced that she was pregnant, but it is equally easy to imagine that both Palins quickly calmed down. Their first son Track was born eight months after they eloped, and they have shown that they know how to deal with an early pregnancy.

The political problems come when we examine the consequences of Sarah Palin’s unwillingness to extend to other women the zone of privacy she wants for herself. Sarah Palin opposes sex-education programs that teach teenagers about contraception, and she believes in abortion only when the mother’s life is in danger. She would not even make an exception for rape.

For women who don’t share Palin’s views the consequences of what she advocates are dire. Nearly half of all girls between the ages of 15 and 19 have had sex at least once according to the Guttmacher Institute, and some 750,000 of them become pregnant every year. Palin would force these girls—82 percent of whose pregnancies are unplanned—to give birth.

For women who know that they are pregnant with a Down syndrome child—90 percent of whom choose abortion—Palin’s opposition to choice becomes even more catastrophic. With enough resources and enough patience, it is certainly possible to give quality care to a Down syndrome baby, but it is a task that can overwhelm a family. Almost half of Down syndrome children have heart defects. More than 60 percent have vision problems. About 75 percent have hearing loss, and about 25 percent develop Alzheimer’s disease after the age of 35.

In Sarah Palin’s world these women, along with teenage mothers, are out of luck. “Tough” is all she has to say to them. They don’t in the end get options if those options are in conflict with Sarah Palin’s beliefs.

In a recent op-ed urging former Hillary Clinton supporters to give their votes to Barack Obama, feminist pioneer Gloria Steinem observed, “To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, ‘Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.’” Steinem isn’t guilty of hyperbole. Despite the difference in age, Sarah Palin remains a logical extension of John McCain, who in his growing rightward tilt has called for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Together, they sum up the Republicans’s frightening idea of what it means to be the party of change in 2008.

Nicolaus Mills, a professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College, is the author of Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America’s Coming of Age as a Superpower. Photo: Palin talks to an Alaska native serving at Camp Buehring in Kuwait (Christopher Grammer / U.S. Army / Wikimedia Commons)