Bristol Palin About-Faces on Abstinence

Abstinence programs have been a hot discussion topic lately. The new Obama administration has recently decided to cut the budget on programs that are abstinence-only and instead move to more comprehensive sex education courses that offer discussion on contraceptives, sexually transmitted diseases and the like. Conservatives and liberals on the subject have had many a heated debate on the topic both on the official political front and around the water cooler at work. I’ve even had a few brushes with the topic myself in the past few weeks.

A few months ago, I highlighted an interview between Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol, and Greta Van Susteren, host of “On the Record” with FOX News. Bristol got pregnant at the age of 17 and during the time of the interview, her son, Tripp, was only 2 months old. When asked what her parents thought about teenage pregnancy, Bristol stated, “I’m not the first person that it’s happened to and I’m not going to be the last. But I don’t know. I’d love for – to be an advocate to prevent teen pregnancy because it’s not, like, a situation that you want to strive for, I guess.” Van Susteren later went on to ask about contraception to which Bristol said, “I don’t want to get into detail about that. But I think abstinence is, like – like, the – I don’t know how to put it – like, the main – everyone should be abstinent or whatever, but it’s not realistic at all.” She went on to say that teenagers having sex before marriage is “more and more accepted now.”

Now, a few months later, Bristol is singing a different tune. She now feels that it is very realistic for teenagers to abstain from sex in order to prevent unwanted pregnancies. On a recent interview with “Good Morning America” she admits that it would have been much wiser for her if she had abstained from sex. She stated, “Regardless of what I did personally, I just think that abstinence is the only way you can effectively, 100 percent foolproof way you can prevent pregnancy.”

The father of her baby Tripp, Levi Johnston, was also on hand for the interview. He feels that having an abstinence-only sex education approach is “not realistic” for teenagers. His thoughts are that young people should also be taught the importance of contraception, especially since so many are already sexually active. He stated, “Abstinence is a great idea. But I also think you need to enforce, you know, condoms and birth control and other things like that to have safe sex. I don’t just think telling young kids, ‘You can’t have sex,’ it’s not going to work.”

Johnston went on to say that while he and Bristol often used condoms, there were many occasions when they would have unsafe sex…and this is how their son was conceived. In the interview, Bristol talked about how chubby Tripp was getting and his giggles. She said that Tripp is “the love of my life.” She does admit though that it would have been much easier if she had waited to have him later on down the line.