Palin made a choice according to her values. Her daughter has had the same choice, though influence by abstinence-only education parents didn't seem to have had much sway. Denying other women and young girls to choose according to their own values and their own circumstances is the problem.

THANK YOU for pointing this out - it's the first thought that entered my mind when I learned her position on abortion last Friday, when she became McCain's running mate. Sarah Palin got a chance to exercise her right to choose; so did her daughter Bristol (though Mom could easily be the one making the choices there too). But she doesn't think anyone else should have that right. Being a politician of questionable effectivess both as a mayor (ran up a $20M deficit in Wasilla) and as a governor (Troopergate, supporting the Bridge to Nowhere and other federal earmarks) provide plenty of reasons for voters to turn away from Palin and this ticket. But her two-faced position on reproductive rights shows her to be a hypocrite of the worst kind and completely unfit to be Vice President.

I know this was touched on in Broadsheet, but the only other place I've seen this mentioned was a letter to the editor in the NYT.

The fact is, Palin has used to language of choice in connection with both her and her daughter's pregnancy. She said she and her husband made the "decision" to have Trig after learning he had Down syndrome. She said she was proud of her daughter's "decision" to have her baby.

I want the mainstream media to acknowledge the tragic irony that Palin appreciates the fact that she and her daughter have a choice - a choice they exercised in private without government interference. Yet, Palin and her ilk blithely would deny that choice to any other woman, even in case of rape or incest.

I chose to have my two beautiful children. I honor and allow others to also have that choice without government intervention in the decisions.

NRA Barbie with her 'family values' can pucker up, as far as I'm concerned. As a woman, and a mother myself, I am still a firm supporter of abortion on demand and without apology. With the scores of unwanted children born every day to parents ill-equipped in every way to care for them, abortion should not only be encouraged, it should be subsidized with federal funds. As should voluntary sterilization for either sex.

This pro-life shtick is disgusting, especially when presented by people who support every other conceivable means of killing potentially innocent people (death penalty, illegal wars, you name it).

Big Republican Brother will tell you what your choices will be.

That's what big government meddling Republicans do.

I actually don't see her decision to have Trig as hypocritical, but rather as in keeping with her values about human life. In that, she has practiced what she preaches. To have done what she did isn't hypocritical. If she's following religious convictions, she may not have felt that she really had a choice about it, regardless of what the law is.

Generally, I would regard a woman *trying* to get pregnant at her age to be irresponsible, but we don't know the circumstances under which she got pregnant. If I were to find myself unexpectedly pregnant at any age, with a special-needs child, I hope I'd find the strength in myself to do what she's done.

But that's where my respect for her ends, too.

Far more disturbing to me is her trumpeting of the fact that Bristol chose by herself to keep her child, for she's celebrating not the act of carrying the pregnancy to term and raising the child, but the act of choosing. I dearly hope that someone will have the guts to ask her straight out why she would allow her daughter to have a choice that she would't allow any other girl to have, and why Bristol is more deserving than the rest of us.

Sarah Palin's situation with Trig involved her choices only for the sake of her own conscience. But with Bristol, it's about what she would impose on others' lives. She decided that her daughter shouldn't have to live under the same restrictions that she thinks everyone else should.

I work with women who like Palin are classified as "advanced maternal age," and who are trying to conceive with the help of biomedical interventions or trying naturally. As Dr Parikh explained, they face an uphill battle at every turn . . . not only is it increasingly difficult to get pregnant once beyond age 38, but the risks are also increased. I cannot imagine where the lines will be drawn with a VP such as this along with the potential of three new Supreme Court justices.

It is quite disconcerting to recognize the power this woman may have in shaping reproductive rights in regards to reproductive medicine. It is absolutely one's own right to decide which path one will take when learning news that a pregnancy is genetically abnormal. However, it absolutely is not one's right to limit access to those choices based solely on morality or one's own experience. Frankly, it is selfish righteousness thinly veiled under a guise of morality. I always love hearing the argument of smaller government but then in the next breath discussion that something, reproductive rights need to be regulated. We would need an executive and legislative government to regulate that, a judicial system to enforce it . . . how is that smaller government again?

I still have yet to see a rational, sensible or believable explanation for for a woman, pregnant at 44 (which is considered advanced maternal age/high risk pregnancy), with a Down syndrome baby (also considered a high risk pregnancy and delivery), who goes into labor a month prematurely (even more high-risk), has her water break (which introduces a risk of infection and imminent labor, and usually warrants immediate hospitalization), but does NOT go to the hospital, but instead, chooses to get on an airplane for an 8-hour trip from Texas to Alaska, arrives in Alaska, then bypasses major medical centers to drive another hour to a small clinic (which does not have a neo-natal intensive care unit/NICU, or perinatologists or neonatologists) to have a family doctor (not an ob-gyn) deliver a premature child with Down syndrome?

I would really love to hear a medical professional explain how Saint Sarah, the perfect mother, wasn't utterly negligent in the way she handled the birth of Trig.

Frankly, I'm surprised she didn't also parachute out of the plane and land in the tundra, and go snowmobiling for a few more hours, before shooting a moose, skinning it, coming back and cooking it up for dinner, and then squatting in the outhouse to deliver the kid herself, for goodness sake.

Truth is...as far as I see it, she may not have had an abortion, but she certainly seems to have been doing her darndest to ensure a poor outcome for the delivery of this baby.

If being such a supposedly great mother is one of her primarily qualifications to be vice president, then why isn't anyone questioning her judgment??????????????????????????????