Children - Off-Limits, Public Policy - Not

photo courtesy of Daryl Cagle for PolitcalCartoons.com


No candidate's family and personal life should become political fodder. However, when a political party and their candidates twist personal choices into campaign issues and try to make private matters public policy then they do leave their own personal choices, and sadly those of their family, open to critique.

So let's not walk on egg shells when it comes to Sarah Palin, her public positions on reproductive rights and education, and the recent revelations about her daughter. If placed in the proper context, the pregnancy of an unwed high school teenager within Ms. Palin's family is open to civil political discussion. Ms. Palin and the GOP can not hold up the Governor's personal choice, in regard to her own recent pregnancy, to advance a political argument and then ask their political opponents to not comment on the fact that obviously there are instances when the "abstinence only" message falls on deaf ears.

Hopefully by conducting a civil discussion on this issue, the GOP may truly become conservatives who posess a measure of compassion for the milliions of Americans who they have bashed with great glee for so long.

Deb Della Pana of The Political Voices of Women and Turn Left wrote a posts which sums up what so many on the progressive community are thinking about this issue:

So Much for Abstinence Only Education