Feminism is About Babies Too

Since McCain announced his VP pick, Sarah Palin, the left wing attack dogs have been trying their hardest to smear her with anything they can dig up or dream up.  I do not agree with a lot of the issues Palin supports, but these attacks are giving me deja vu of what Hillary went through this spring. 

First, there was the bizarre rumor that Palin’s new baby was actually her daughter’s.  They postulated that Palin wore a costume that made her appear to be with child, and that her boarding a plane after her water broke was absolutely the proof that the child could not be hers.  That rumor, however, was quickly discarded when Palin disclosed that her 17 her old child Bristol was actually 5 months pregnant herself.  This news gave way to a new set of attacks, namely that Palin is a bad parent and hypocrite because of her Christian views and support of abstinence education.  The narrative the Obamans are trying to sell is that Bristol would not have gotten pregnant if her parents had been more liberal and advocated contraception.

These attacks would be bad enough, but an even more insidious one emerging from the cess pool of the Obama fan base is that Palin is a bad person simply for having too many children of her own.  She has five.  They criticize her for having a child over the age of 40, and argue that she could not effectively carry out her duties as VP because of her domestic responsibilities.

Wait, what decade are we in again?  What century?  When did Democrats start telling women that they cannot have children and careers at the same time?  Isn’t this one of the most regressive stances to take as far as women’s rights are concerned?  Doesn’t freedom of choice include the choice to have a child not just terminate a pregnancy?

My sister is fifteen years younger than I am.  We are a very liberal family and my mother was adamant that my sister get birth control as soon as she turned fifteen.  My sister wasn’t able to get the contraceptive implant because she had an allergic reaction to it.  Therefore, she did like so many women do, she took the pill.

The summer before she was set to attend her Freshman year at UNC she went on a Senior cruise and chose to go off the pill.  She got pregnant by her high school sweetheart then, and in doing so altered the course of her life.  When she told me about it, I was initially sad because I knew more than she realized the extra burden she had put on herself and the things she would miss, like the freedom of going away to college.  However, we all wanted her to keep the baby, but my mom let her know that if she wanted an abortion, we would support her decision.

She had the baby, and with the support of her family, she graduated from UNC with honors.  Last year she got married and is now living in Iwakuni Japan where her husband is stationed with the marine corp.  My niece is a genius I believe.  She has been on the computer since age three.  She is not yet six and reading at a third grade level, and now she is starting to speak Japanese.

I tell this story because I used to believe the liberal line that if you taught your children about sex and gave them contraception you could avoid teen pregnancy.  I still believe that it is important to offer those things.  I am definitely not a strict abstinence only advocate, but I believe we must take into account that there is choice involved.  My sister chose to get pregnant.  A lot of teens do.  It seems to me that nature tells us to get busy reproducing at that age, and a lot of kids heed the call.  What dawned on me recently, however, is that even beyond the abortion issue, having children is a feminist issue.

Obama recently remarked that he didn’t want his daughters lives “to be ruined” by teen pregnancy.  To me, this statement says a lot about his views on career women and their options.  He seems to believe that it is mutally exclusive to be a successful woman and have a baby at a young age.  His supporters are now even making the arguments that the number of children a woman has should determine whether or not she is qualified to hold office.  Sally Quinn asks whether or not Palin could answer the 3AM phone call, if one of her babies were sick.

Women, this is sexism at its height.  These were the arguments put to women in the fifties that their place was in the home and that a career could never be reconciled with having kids.  Thankfully, we have moved beyond those early days.  The family leave act made it easier to take time off from work to take care of children, and many men have stepped up to share the task of keeping care of them.  Hillary wrote, “It Takes a Village”, and that is exactly the answer to this dilemma.  When we share the responsibility for our children, women have more freedom to offer other sides of themselves.  Forcing women to choose between careers and children will forever keep them as second class citizens,  because women will continue to give birth to children.  It is nature.  We cannot change this fact.  What we can do is create a world that welcomes women with children into the work force, one that supports the choice to have a child, not one that punishes it.

In their attempt to tear down Sarah Palin the Obamans are showing how sexist they are.  They argue that she is unfit for VP because of her children.  Are there still women out there who believe Obama will stand up for women’s issues after seeing the way he trashes the most creative act a human being can perform?  How can these women still support him after seeing how he uses the most regressive of attitudes toward women in order to score political points?  I hope women who disregarded the sexist attacks on Clinton because of CDS, will now recognize the sexism being hurled at Palin and lay it squarely at the feet of those pushing it, Obama campaign, the DNC, and their media enablers. 

Women, wake up!