Sarah Palin, The Irony of It All

For a myriad of reasons Sarah Palin is an insulting choice for the GOP as Vice-President. She is a candidate that McCain choice, I believe solely based on her gender, which is reverse sexism. He must have believed that Hilary's supporters wouldn't care what woman they voted for as long as it was a human being with a uterus. In my opinion that is like voting for someone solely based on the fact that they have a penis.

McCain could not have picked a more anti-woman candidate on all fronts, staunchly pro-life, no opinion on equal pay for equal work, healthcare, or any other issue that directly effects half the population.
With all that being said it was released today that Palin's 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant.

In the news release, the McCain campaign made sure to state that:
Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.

From Feministing.com:

While it's obvious why they made this statement to assure the public
that Bristol was not coerced into keeping the baby (after all, she does have a
parent who is a staunch opponent of the right to choose and is currently on the
Republican presidential ticket), as my significant other pointed out, there's
some serious hypocrisy at play here. I mean, John McCain and Sarah Palin don't
believe women have a right to choose. It's absolutely absurd for the campaign to
emphasize the fact that Bristol "made this decision," and then push for policies
that take away that choice.
In reality, Bristol's actual "choice" was
probably not whether to terminate the pregnancy or carry it to term, but whether
raise the child herself or put it up for adoption.

But the reason that the McCain campaign chose to emphasize Bristol's agency in this decision was to reassure the public that this pregnancy is not coercive. They know the public wants to feel secure in the knowledge that it was Bristol's choice to keep the pregnancy. And coming from the McCain campaign, which opposes a woman's right to choose, that statement is disgusting. As Kate Sheppard wrote in In These Times recently, during the 2000 primary McCain said that if his daughter got pregnant it would be a "family decision":

"The final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel," McCain said, referring to himself and his wife, Cindy. When reporters suggested that this view made him, in fact, pro-choice, McCain became irritated. "I don't think it is the pro-choice position to say that my daughter and my wife and I will discuss something that is a family matter that we have to decide."

In other words: My family and my daughter deserve a choice, but no other woman can be trusted with this decision. This fits nicely with the narrative on both Palin's decision to carry her Down's syndrome child to term and her daughter's decision to carry her own pregnancy to term. Their decisions are seen by the antichoice Republican base as affirmation that Palin shares their values. But the underlying message that each woman had a choice is a validation of pro-choice values.

That encapslated it all....