Palin with Child

Morning’s Minion asks, apropos of Governor Palin’s son Trig, who has Down Syndrome, which of the candidates “has the better policies to facilitate a family raising a child with special needs?” He says the answer is clearly Senator Obama. I confess that I have not read Senator Obama’s proposals specifically regarding children with Down Syndrome. Presumably he favors more than being left for dead in a soiled utility closet, which was the practice for children with Down Syndrome that he defended while in the Illinois State Senate. The sad fact, though, is that more than 90% of women who learn that their unborn child may have Down Syndrome have that child aborted. Whether having a smart, successful woman who choose not to abort her child just because he had Down Syndrome in the public eye for the next several years would have an impact on the rate women opt for abortion in such circumstances is an open question. But it is possible that a Vice President Palin would save more lives just through her personal witness, even if she is not able to advance her pro-life agenda legislatively, than would Senator Obama’s proposals.

But while Morning’s Minion was contemplating Governor Palin’s youngest son, Trig, my thought were directed towards her eldest daughter, Bristol, who is currently, to use Senator Obama’s terminology, being punished with a baby. Whether the Governor’s growing grandchild is yet entitled to human rights is, of course, above the good Senator’s pay grade. But he is strongly in favor of Bristol’s right to have an abortion, with or without her parents knowledge or consent, any time between now and the election, and for several months thereafter. He might even be willing to pay for it (not personally, you understand, but using taxpayer money). It is a strange, sad fact about the current American scene that Bristol’s pregnancy seems to many to be a sharper negative for the McCain/Plain ticket than Senator Obama’s views on the subject are for the Obama/Biden ticket, but such is the world in which we live.