GOP on matters of “Decision”

For the most part, I want to stay away from this issue because as Obama said, we need to lay off families, but the truth of the matter is that there’s several hypocrisies surrounding Bristol Palin’s pregnancy.  Firstly, she’s 5 months pregnant which means that this was hidden from the public for FIVE months.  Why?  Was it kept hidden for the same reason that Sarah Palin kept her own pregancy a secret until the very end?  Here’s the official statement from Sarah regarding her daughter Bristol’s pregnancy:

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents,” Sarah and Todd Palin said in the brief statement. {emphasis mine}

This statement seems like an oxymoron to me coming from a staunch Anti-Choice governor.  I have to wonder how much of it was truly her choice. I wonder how much coercion (whether they’ll admit to it or not) was involved in this teenagers “decision” to keep the child and to marry the father(!?).  I have issues with what I’m going to consider this shotgun wedding because I have to wonder whether she would have considered marrying this boy had she not been pregnant at this time.  If the answer to this is no, then in my opinion, she really shouldn’t marry the boy because it will eventually lead to a divorce.  Why am I mentioning all this?  Coming from the conservative right who believe in “family values”, I don’t believe that forcing a teenager into marriage, or even teaching that she must marrying because she’s pregnant, is very good family values.  It is teaching her that marriage isn’t about loving and caring for your family, it’s about the situation you’ve put yourself in and concequences you have to suffer through.  It’s seems that it’s setting her up to fail and making her just one of many statistics.  I may be wrong but I’m almost positive I won’t be.  Very few marriages in this day and age survive, and even less when they’re married as teenagers.  What kind of “family values” are these?

Over at Feministing there’s a debate about the pregnancy/choice issue because it just seems as if these incredibly staunch conservatives are flinging around the word “decision” and going around pretending as if “decision” does not equal “choice” when it truth it does.  It seems that this “decision” is fine and dandy when it comes to their own families, but when it comes to the general public-which I seriously feel as if they think we’re too stupid to know what to do with ourselves should we be faced with such a decison-it’s not ok for them to make this decision and they feel as if the government needs to make the decision for us.

I could be totally off on my assumptions, I could be completely backwards on my thinking, but seeing as how things are evolving in this election, and the things that I’m hearing lately, I really don’t think I’m wrong.