Well, the Republican National Convention is over, and I imagine you’re back in Alaska now. I can’t begin to imagine what you have been feeling over the past couple of weeks. You and your family have been vilified in the press and your boyfriend has been painted in a very unfavorable light. If you’d only had premarital sex, I doubt there would have been this type of uproar. But you became pregnant. And suddenly this became an issue of morality.
I know that other people will disagree, but I don’t see sex as necessarily being a moral issue. To me, abstaining from sex isn’t necessarily a moral choice, just as engaging in sex isn’t necessarily immoral. But I think that sex is sacred somehow. The biggest reason is because it gives you the opportunity to bring a new life into this world. And that is something that should never be taken lightly.
However, I don’t believe that marriage is any kind of panacea for an unplanned pregnancy. Of course, I don’t necessarily think sex is a sin. But even if it is a sin, I don’t think marriage is the way to address it.
So I hope you will think about this seriously. You’ve been unfairly thrust into the spotlight, and it’s probably very hard to think clearly under the glare. I wish more than anything that your parents wouldn’t keep repeating and reinforcing what you’re going to do before it’s even happened. And I hope you know that you still have the ability to make choices about your own life.
Many people have been talking about how unplanned pregnancies are fairly commonplace in the American family. I believe this is true; I was thinking just last week about how there have been at least three in my own family. Undoubtedly there have been others that I wasn’t informed about. Most recently, it was one of my distant male relatives who impregnated his girlfriend. They were both 22.
When his mother told me the news, she said that the two of them had decided she was going to give birth to the baby. They didn’t know what was going to happen after that. She said that they were discussing whether or not they wanted to get married. And she left it at that.
I think I know what she wanted for her son and her grandchild-to-be. But she left it to the son and the girlfriend to decide. And they decided that at 22, they were not yet ready to get married.
Twenty-two is very young. Seventeen is very, very young.
One thing I suspect you know already is that it is extremely difficult for a 17-year-old to live independently from her family. I know this from personal experience, and I didn’t have to worry about a baby. Or a spouse.
I don’t know what your relationship with your boyfriend is like. But I have known a number of teenage girls. And I know that many of them have sex with their boyfriends because the boyfriends want it, and not because they themselves particularly want or desire it. Sometimes they don’t even enjoy it, which is even more shocking. See, because you really should enjoy your sexual encounters. They should be mutually pleasurable. If they’re not, you’re being shortchanged and your partner is shortchanging you.
You should be able to tell your partner. If you can’t, it’s a measure of your inequality.
I don’t know what your boyfriend is like. I don’t know if he can become a man in the next four or five months. But if he can’t, you still will have to become a woman. You have to do this because you owe it to your child. I don’t know what becoming a woman should look like. But it should mean that you consider all your responsibilities and your abilities and how you can best care for this new life.
One thing you need to do is get back in school. You may figure (or maybe somebody tells you) that you can always get your GED. It’s true that most fairly intelligent 17-year-olds can pass the GED exam without having completed high school. But whether or not the GED is truly “equivalent” is highly open to debate. I tend to think it isn’t a substitute for actually putting in the hours. And employers overall tend to agree. In part I believe this is because getting your high school degree is a mark of stability, of practicality, of endurance.
The other thing you need to do is educate yourself about birth control and contraceptives. This has to do not only with preventing future pregnancies (if that is your desire), but with your own health. You need to stay healthy now for your new son or daughter, and you need to protect yourself. Like teen pregnancy, AIDS isn’t something that happens to other people. It’s a risk that you take when you become sexually active.
One thing you don’t have to do is to get married. Again, I don’t know anything about your boyfriend. But I do know what it’s like to support one’s self at seventeen. Throw in the complexity of a marital relationship and a new baby. I know your mother has already announced that you’re going to get married. But nothing is set in stone now. If you do marry, Bristol, make sure it’s what you really think is right. Don’t do it because you have to or because your parents want you to or because you feel pressure to. If you have any doubt at all about marrying your boyfriend, just don’t do it.
If your parents really love and support you, they will understand.
(Anyway, I hope somebody will save this and send it back to me when I have teenagers. Because I would like to think I am smarter than all get-out and understanding to boot.)
Resist racism 
This is a great post.
Her family, having the finacial means, can and should rally around this young woman and encourage her to get an education and not marry simply because she is pregnant.
That is the dumbest reason to get married ever.
They are so young! She can still have a terrific life, though it will be a little harder to come by, haven chosen to be a mother and responsible for a whole other human being. That alone will be trying, but take into account all the public scrutiny, familial turmoil, emotional responsibility then add in the work of a marriage when you are young, and frankly, probably not mature enough to be solely responsible for another life…
Most legal adults aren’t mature enough for that responsibility!
There are women who have/had so much less that’ve chosen to keep their children and raise them without getting married. It’s not ideal, but neither is a marriage at 17 years old that, i wonder, may be an act forced upon Ms Palin.