The XX Factor: What women really think.

Bristol Smackdown

This is a guest post from Abigail Pilgrim, a writer in Washington, D.C. Welcome!

Samantha, were you really expecting that she was going to present some kind of five-step plan outlining the "details of abstinence or safe sex"?  And Susannah, do you call her "astonishingly dim" because she got pregnant, because she's not as articulate as Obama, or what?

I personally loved Bristol's interview, not because she came across as a polished poster girl but because she presented some of the real feelings and questions that can too often go missing from the teen pregnancy debate. I didn't find anything immature about her sitting down with her parents and feeling terrified. But maybe it was just me and Bristol that have ever had that so-sick-I-can-barely-talk-but-I-know-I-have-to-tell-you feeling with my parents. I hope those kinds of confrontations happen more often than the cases that my sister (who's a nurse) tells me about of the teenage girls who show up at the hospital, find out they're pregnant, and then refuse to let the nurses inform their parents before they get an abortion. Speaking of which, does anyone else think it's crazy that girls get reproductive rights before they get their learner's permits? Are you really prepared to choose whether or not to have a baby if you're not even capable of choosing whether or not to change lanes on I-495? It's insane to me.
 
The main takeaway I had from Bristol's interview is that there's something twisted when culture is practically doing everything it can to encourage teens to have sex, but then when they do and someone gets pregnant, we all act completely horrified because they're obviously unprepared to be a parent.  

Everyone seems to agree that she made a mistake. But what was her mistake? Was it the sex part, the getting pregnant part, the having the baby part, or maybe just the choosing to do an interview on national TV part?