Over at The Rasmussem Report, a fair opinion piece by Joe Conason about why Bristol Palin’s pregnancy matters to our current national politics. He urges readers “let us stop pretending this is good news.” An excerpt below:

It seems fair to assume, however, that Sarah Palin’s enthusiasm for “abstinence-only” sex education, which is shared by Sen. McCain, helped to cause her daughter’s misfortune. As a politician who insists on lecturing adolescents to abstain without teaching them about contraception, she may never have informed Bristol how to protect herself from an unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Her views on reproductive rights — including opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest — are too extreme even for her running mate.

The Alaska governor probably assumed that her daughter — no doubt a regular churchgoer like the rest of the family — was saving herself for marriage according to religious doctrine. Meanwhile, daughter Bristol probably understood that Mom, loving but ambitious and deeply dogmatic, was the last person she dared to ask for advice on birth control.