I Am Pro-Choice

And I've got a new piece up at The Guardian's Comment is free America, in which I make use of that principle:

Already there is enough political hay to feed a stampede of unity ponies being made about the fact that an anti-choice (even in cases of rape) and pro-abstinence-only sex ed candidate has an unmarried, pregnant, teenage daughter. Bristol's pregnancy is fair game, so goes the argument, because it shows the failure of conservative policies.

But does it? We have no idea what the circumstances of the conception were. Maybe Bristol and her partner knew how to use contraception, had secured contraception, were using contraception – and it failed. Wouldn't be the first time. Such a scenario would hardly make Bristol's pregnancy an indictment of Sarah Palin's politics; it would merely suggest that Bristol doesn't share her mother's politics. Wouldn't be the first time for that, either. Just ask Ron Regan Junior. There's the possibility that Bristol wanted to get pregnant and planned this pregnancy – which is a choice lots of young women make, including Barack Obama's 18-year-old mother, as he reminded us today. The term "pro-choice" is robbed of all meaning if it means only defending the choices with which we agree.

Or can't conveniently be used as a political football against a candidate we don't like.

This was written earlier today, so a lot of these ideas have already been covered in the comments thread of my earlier post and in Zuzu's excellent post, but, if you like, you can read the whole thing here.

(As an aside, I'd prefer the article had been headlined "Pregnancies aren't political footballs" as I feel like "babies" reinforces anti-choice rhetoric. I've made the suggestion for a change, just FYI. And now I'm on my way out the door, so if it does get changed, just ignore this whole thing, heh.) Never mind, because my editor is the best fucking editor in the universe.