Why Bristol Palin Really Is the Perfect Ambassador for Abstinence Education

By Michael Rowe, Huffington Post. Posted May 8, 2009.

One might ask if this latest publicity grab by the Palin family is little more than an attempt by Governor Palin to regain control of her image, which has been spiraling into the deadly freefall as confirmed by the latest Hays Research poll, which has her approval rating at 59%.

On the other hand, maybe this has nothing to do with Mrs. Palin at all. Given the recent public tit-for-tat between Bristol and Levi Johnston, perhaps Bristol sees this as upping the ante, or repairing her own image by classifying their union as a "mistake" she wants to "warn other girls" away from. Or maybe she's just a bored teenager enjoying the chance to travel around on someone else's dime and enjoy her inherited celebrity for a little longer before Levi Johnson gathers his wits about him, contacts a fathers rights lawyer, and slaps Bristol and her her family with a parental access suit.

"Abstinence is a great idea," Johnson said pointedly yesterday, "but I also think you need to enforce, you know, condoms and birth control and other things like that to have safe sex. I don't just think telling young kids, you can't have sex, it's not going to work. It's not realistic."

Suddenly I realized what an ironic stroke of genius Bristol's selection really was, because, Bristol really is the perfect ambassador for abstinence education: She's proof that it doesn't work.

Over a billion federal dollars have been wasted on abstinence programs during Bush's eight-year Thirty Days of Night in an attempt to placate the conservative base. Study after study has proven that abstinence education is a failure because Teens Will Get Up To What They Will Get Up To. Especially when their evangelical parents (who are terrified by the very thought of naming body parts, let alone body fluids) have refused to teach and impress upon them them the absolute necessity of preventative birth control, including how to use a condom properly and how to use the pill if they're going to have sex.

The collateral damage of all this squeamishness is fact and truth. That, and the lives of those teenagers who are going to have sex anyway, because they like, you know, wanted to but didn't have the tools to prevent the results, from pregnancy, to generic STDs, to abortions, to AIDS, and worse.

The "abstinence only" platform is entirely in keeping with the current incarnation of conservative social and political morality. It's the Millennial answer to Nancy Reagan's vapid "Just Say No" drug campaign, and has been shown to be just as unsuccessful. And what's been the solution? "Rebrand" the problem, don't fix it. Slap a fresh coat of lipstick on the pig, and tell people it's "designer" lipstick so they forget what's wearing it.

Instead of admitting that most teenagers are not going to wait till they're married to have sex, and need proper sex education in schools, and practical information including the correct use of available birth control, offer them perky Bristol Palin saying, "Regardless of what I did personally, I just think that abstinence is the only way you can effectively, 100% foolproof way you can prevent pregnancy." Then, when she's asked to reply to the very obvious question of how her new platform should be seen in light of her own behavior, have her say, "I'm not quite sure, I just want to go out there and promote abstinence and say, this is the safest choice. This is the choice that's going to prevent teen pregnancy and prevent a lot of heartache."

In other words, Do as I say, not as I do. Yoo betcha.

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