Thoughts on the Palin pregnancy

By Bryan Fischer

"Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents." ~ Todd and Sarah Palin

"I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby." ~ Sen. Barack Obama

When left-wing bloggers began to spread the malicious and unfounded rumor that Sarah Palin had faked her pregnancy with her recently born son Trig in order to protect her 16 — year-old daughter, Ms. Palin and her husband released a statement revealing that their now-17-year-old daughter is five months along in an out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

Prior to this announcement, Alan Colmes, Sean Hannity's counterpart on Hannity & Colmes, suggested that Palin herself was to blame for her son's Down syndrome condition by failing to give him adequate pre-natal care.

I've received some snarky emails over the weekend about this latest revelation, including one compassionate liberal who referred to the "bastard grandchild" that the Palins' daughter now carries.

Sen. Obama, to his credit, has urged his left-leaning followers to leave this matter alone, saying, "I have said before, and I will repeat again: People's families are off-limits. And people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as governor or her potential performance as vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know, my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn't be a topic of our politics."

We will watch with interest to see if the senator's self-identified paragons of compassion in the blogosphere follow their leader. The Idaho Statesman has shown its willingness to hit below the belt by going after a pro-family legislator for decisions made by his 28-year-old son. We'll see whether its editors follow Obama's advice and show restraint in this circumstance.

Several thoughts:

1. Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven. The Judeo-Christian tradition teaches us that all men are fallen creatures, with a built-in tilt toward sin and self-destructive behavior. Christians know this better than anyone; why else would we acknowledge our need for a Savior? In fact, you can't even become a Christian without passing through the doorway of repentance, which is a confession of personal failure and moral weakness.
   
   
2. When a Christian fails, he is faced with a fresh set of choices and what counts is whether he chooses to do the right thing at that point. The Palin's daughter is not denying her failure, is not justifying her behavior, and is doing the right thing by carrying this baby to term and giving it life. Gov. Palin made the McCain campaign aware of her daughter's pregnancy in her first interview with them about the vice-presidency. The family has done all that they should do to deal with the hand they've been dealt in an honest and honorable way.
   
   
3. The Palins can only be accused of hypocrisy if they had taught their daughter that sex outside of marriage is o.k. But they didn't. Gov. Palin has been an unapologetic advocate of abstinence education. Teenage children possess the most precious of God's gift, the gift of free will, and can use that priceless gift to either follow or reject the counsel of their parents.
   
   
4. The Palins' daughter is old enough to be responsible for her own decisions. Her parents can hardly be blamed for a near-adult daughter who is morally responsible for her own life choices. In the Jewish tradition, a boy becomes a "son of the law" (the literal translation of "bar-mitzvah"), at age 12 or 13, meaning that from that point onward he is considered an adult when it comes to his personal responsibility to obey the moral standards of his tradition. Jewish daughters go through a "bat-mitzvah" at the same age for the same reason.
   
   
5. As a pastor for 25 years, I had a number of opportunities to assist families with this exact scenario — a young girl, still living at home, the daughter of parents who had taught her that sex was reserved for marriage, pregnant out of wedlock. My counsel was always the same: Your daughter needs your unconditional love and support, the child she carries has a right to life, and the priority after the child is born is to make sure that he is placed in a loving home with two parents who are married to each other. The Palins are taking that exact course with their daughter.
   
   
6. The family needs our prayers. I know from my personal experience with families who have faced this circumstance that it is a challenging and stressful one even when the circumstances are known only to a few. For a family to have to walk through this in the painful glare of the national media and vicious left-wing critics is not something we would wish on our worst enemies.
   
   

© Bryan Fischer