The Sarah Saga has another twist...Choice

[SoCalDem]

Children often do NOT have the same beliefs that their parents do, but as children, they are subject to the "house rules"..


For a moment, let's consider HER..

Young girls get pregnant all the time, and they often go through these stages:

1) It can't be true..lasts a month or so

2) It MIGHT be true..uses pregnancy tests

3) Oh SHIT is IS true..tells boyfriend..who immediately freaks out

4) Tries to hide it from parents until she "figures out what to do"

5) Let's say your MOM IS THE GOVERNOR, and she's TOTALLY against abortion, and you have NO way to do this on your own in the small-town nature of the place you live

6) By now you are starting to show, and people are asking questions..maybe you puked at school

7) You tell the parents, hoping they can help..and all they come up with is getting you secretly tested by Mom's doctor pal who tells you the baby has Down's syndrome.

8) It's too late now to do anything anyway, and Mom has decided that you will drop out of school and she will pretend to be pregnant and raise your baby, so you can "have a normal life"..

What IF Bristol felt okay enough to talk to her Mom right away, She's 17 (almost an adult, and adult enough to be charged as an adult if she broke the law). What if she had a mom who said "What do YOU want to do, Honey"? and made her know that whatever she decided, it would be ok..

What if she had not been teleported back to 1959, and (perhaps) forced to carry a baby that she would never/could never acknowledge, but would forever wear the shame of it all within her family? What if she really wanted to end the pregnancy and could have done so, safely at a month or so?

The irony too, is this.. As the eldest daughter, it's very likely that she WILL be the longterm caretaker for her brother/son when her parents are old or gone..

What if Bristol's beliefs were NOT the same as her parents? or if this had happened a year later when she was away from their influence, at college? What choice would she have made then?

[DesertFlower]

1. well she would at least have a choice.

my sister had 2 abortions when she was in college. our mom never knew.

[SoCalDem]

2. Exactly.. she was trapped into doing what THEY wanted

not necessarily what SHE wanted..and she ended up caught in their web of lies..

[DesertFlower]

4. if my sister didn't have those

2 abortions her life would have been ruined. the father was not a good choice for a husband. my sister would not have been able to finish school. eventually she did get married (when she was ready) and i'm happy to say i have 2 lovely nieces.

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

3. must be nice to have such moral clarity, to be so sure of yourself as to make

those kinds of decisions for yourself, your child and every woman in America.

[KharmaTrain]

18. Now Whose "Moral Clarity" Are You Asking About?

The OPs? That person isn't going to be the GOOP candidate for Vice President, this lady is...and is doing so based on her "moral convictions"...being the ultimate mom/professional woman. She invoked Hillary Clinton in her acceptance speech as she was the one to shatter that "glass ceiling".

The lady is the poster girl of the "holier than thous" that have made "morals" a weapon...have poisoned the body politic...and she's using her children as props. It's shameful.

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

20. I am definitely speaking about Sarah. I cannot begin to speak to how

much I am beginning to dislike her. She is using the baby as a political prop, and she had to have known that being the candidate would open her oldest daughter to the most unpleasant scrutiny. As a mother myself, i want to protect my children in the most tightly held way. It IS shameful.

[KharmaTrain]

22. I Wholeheartedly Agree...

I have a sibling who is handicapped and my mother dedicated her life to that child...and now I am trying to follow through with her wishes in being the guardian...I've grown up around handicapped people and in many ways I'm grateful for the experience as it taught me at an early age how cruel life can be...and how all life truly is precious...not only inside the uterus. I chose to take a different career path, as did my wife, with our children to make sure one of us could always be around for our children...and, thankfully, our kid did very well and continue to make us very proud, but as I tell my daughter, who is thinking of starting her family, be ready to lock your life away for 15-20 years to make sure your child has all it needs and then some.

This isn't a question about who the mother is...that goes to another issue entirely, my focus has been on the needs of this child and how it looks like its being neglected by a mother who has put her career, and ego, ahead of a baby that has been dealt a cruel hand in life.

Cheers to you...

:toast:

[Junkdrawer]

5. If a doctor was willing to lie about the mother, how do we know it's Downs Syndrome...

and not, say, some other type of developmental disability associated with a premie delivered by a teenage mother?

[eshfemme]

6. Yeah, this is one of the reasons why I feel so bad for the teenage daughter.

If it's not true, she basically got smeared.

If it's true, there's all these moral implications that you have listed already. Plus, she'd have a youthful mistake taht is getting pawed over just because her mom did an incompetent job of dealing with this in the first place and then had the smart fucking idea of accepting the #2 spot on a presidential campaign. So I feel really horrible for her sake.

[BlooInBloo]

7. Teenage girls have sex??? That must be STOPPED!!!!

:rofl:

[DesertFlower]

9. get out the chastity belts. nt

[BlooInBloo]

10. Better yet, there should be a Chastity Ball - where girls pledge their virginity to their daddies!

That's clearly the way to go, and not sick at all.

[KoKo]

8. You NAILED IT...but there are those who will

"Poo Poo" your attempt at discussion because they "think" it's not relevant to their times or their circumstances and they have no "connection" to what went before them and what some of us "know" and want to try to tell them about...because they don't want to listen to those who might have some knowledge of "times past" and choices. They feel that their "choice" is their "OWN" not knowing how fragile this is in these times. They consider they have "RIGHTS"...not understanding how "NEW" these "RIGHTS" are in a small timeframe.

[SoCalDem]

11. A woman's choice only matters if she has access and money

minus either of those, and her choice evaporates..

[KoKo]

14. Kind of "back to the 50's" is what you are saying...but one can still

go to "Planned Parenthood" and find other resources if one isn't in the Top 1% and that's different from the 50's when ...well...I'll leave it there...as to the "underground network" about this.

[SoCalDem]

23. If you are an anonymous kid who's not the governor's daughter

This girl may have been afraid to try that..

[Sanity Claws]

12. That's why Gov. did not announce until 7th month

The daughter had not told her parents about the pregnancy.
The parents may have found out by looking at the photo where the daughter looks pregnant. By that time, it's too late for an abortion and they come up with this convoluted story.
I feel so bad for the daughter.
Andrew Sullivan noticed that the daughter is wearing a ring on her left hand. Interesting.

[SoCalDem]

13. Exactamundo.. they had to choose just the right time frame

It would have looked even odder for the Guv to have a 10 month baby weighing 6 lb 2 oz.. they had to frame the time, so that whenever the baby came, it would be "reasonable".. although an 8 month fetus weight over 6 lbs may not be all that common..

[KoKo]

16. The time frame seems to be getting into a "verifiable window" if more folks keep doing research

a "TIMELINE" that would blow this out...might be just forthcoming. It's all adding up. That "Trophy Baby" is why Sarah doesn't have a connection with him. She's willing to drag him around like a watermelon because that BABY IS NOT HERS...and she's covering up...

[elfin]

15. My sister had an abortion 1958 at 18 and I was 14 --

She still does not know that I know.

This was in 1959 -- she left Northern Michigan for a "job interview" in Detroit during her wild and crazy summer with resort "fudgie"s. Most likely accomplished by my fairly well-connected parents.

I have never told her that I know after all these years, knowing that it would destroy her (and her now husband .

Apparently, it was well known by other late teens in the area and I heard about it from a trusted friend many years later and then put the pieces together.

Maybe her husband knows due to her full disclosure- and possibly due to the fact that her subsequent two pregnancies were preemies due to RH negative factor, which can kick in after a first pregnancy. Admittedly, my medical knowledge is scant on this point.

When she admires Repugs (namely Bush and Romney), I counter with Choice and she falls silent.

Oh, the secrets we keep in the name of love.

edited for spelling

[KoKo]

17. Don't be hard on her though...those who lived during that time...had to keep many "secrets"

and it wasn't then, like it is today. It was painful for her...she wanted to move on...because SHAME was built into all females in the 50's and early 60's. It was shameful...whatever happened to you sexually..and remember the "guy" never was ever held accountable. It was always up to the famale to "DO SOMETHING"...if the guy wouldn't submit to a "shotgun wedding" or a "pay off to the girl or her parents." Girls were shipped off to homes that took care of the problem...claiming that you had Mono or some other medical difficulty to explain your absence...but the rumor mill always whispered. Folks just didn't talk about it in the "open" back then...and so one lived with what was considered "Personal Shame" and just wanted to move on...to keep one's mental health in some kind of balance.

Thanks for your post...what you said is a window on that time.

[woo me with science]

19. Wow, it sounds like you were in the room

when all this was happening. Good thing you were there and can tell us what happened and what everyone said and did.

[SoCalDem]

21. You're welcome

[Pastiche423]

25. lol

Great response!

[susanna]

24. Many women have likely been in/experienced similar situations, that's all.

It goes with the biological equipment. I think you may want to consider the fact that there is little new under the sun as regards unplanned pregnancy, especially the shame so many in our culture associate with it. The "hiding" impulse is very, very real. My 32-year old sister (yes, really) did it while living with my parents after a traumatic divorce. At her age, she still felt the need to not tell them until her sixth month because she felt that they would be disappointed in her. It really is all too common.

BTW, I now have a fabulous niece who thinks I'm the sh!t. My parents adore her. In a nutshell, my sister never, ever needed to worry. Yet her actions were a self-protective mechanism that many women (regardless of age) adopt when faced with an unexpected pregnancy. My two cents.

on edit: clarity