To Sarah Palin, Chelsea Clinton's pregnancy is just another excuse to be vile

To Sarah Palin, Chelsea Clinton's pregnancy is just another excuse to be vile
by Laura Clawson
Daily Kos
May 07, 2014
Sarah Palin just had to weigh in on how Hillary Clinton might feel about her daughter's pregnancy, and Palin continues to be disgusting:

“She, just knowing that her daughter Chelsea is pregnant with a baby — it’s a real baby!” Palin said during an interview with “Extra” host Mario Lopez on the set of her Sportsman Channel show. “It’s not some disposable something, and I know that will be controversial. But those who, perhaps, they’re in this position now as a parent or a grandparent, they realize sanctity of life, how innocent, how precious it is. And of all places it should be in the womb that these babies are protected. So maybe even on a social issue like that she’ll open her eyes.”

Psst, Sarah. You do know Hillary Clinton had a child herself, right? That would be Chelsea, the woman whose current pregnancy you're talking about. All the evidence suggests that Chelsea is adored by both her parents, and has been all her life. So I'm pretty sure her mother is up on the whole "where do babies come from" thing and nonetheless believes that women who don't want to be pregnant or have a baby should have the right to choose not to do so.

In fact, it's not uncommon for women to find that having a baby, even particularly having a much-wanted baby born prematurely or in crisis, can make them more, not less, pro-choice. When Natasha Chart's son was born five weeks early and had weeks of health problems, she wrote "this pregnancy has further revealed to me why it’s wrong and inhumane to make light of how difficult it is to 'just have the baby,' as anti-choice extremists say everyone should have to do." Dallas Schubert wrote of the experience of having a severely premature baby that the experience made her more, not less, pro-choice, because "I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have my choice taken from me, or to have endured shame and stigma from society for it. I deserved no more and no less support, understanding, and compassion than any other woman facing the complex and difficult decisions that come with being pregnant." Jessica Valenti, who was forced to give birth prematurely to save her own life, writes that "I am also more pro-choice than before. I know first-hand what it's like to have a pregnancy threaten your life, and how quickly—and without warning—things can go wrong."

These are not women who think of pregnancy as "disposable something," in Palin's vile words. Nor, I'm sure, are Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. They're just women who can see complexity and who think women have the right to make choices about their bodies, their health, their lives.