Here in Georgia, it is considered ideal to kick your teenage child out of the house if she has a baby (the baby goes as well). Or was that in the 1950’s?

So while the hue that is being raised about Obama’s "pregnany as punishment for pre-marital sex" comments in light of Palin’s own familial issue is in full swing within the conservative media, I wonder about how secret abortions were historically seen as a necessary reproductive restriction, by parents in the 19th and 20th centuries, in order to 1) clandestinely conform to the prevailing Victorian morality (without resorting to contraceptives) and 2) to extricate their daughter – and by extension, her family – of the burden.

So if the conservatives want to return Victorian morality to constitutional status, then why can’t those who would otherwise prefer to conform to such morailty take such measures as abortion (as painful as it is) in order to conform?

I’m not an advocate for abortion and I’m not for Obama or McCain, but I don’t trust the reactions of the conservatives against the commentary as being all that altruistic ("for the sake of the unborn"). Some people see having children out of wedlock as a punishment for engaging in a rush-of-the-moment decision. Those who are "pro-life" are demanding a recognition of the distinction between a punishment and a consequence (an unfortunate consequence) for the designation of pregnancy out of wedlock, but how can there be such a distinction given that someone like Palin’s daughter wasn’t expecting a pregnancy when she was knocked up by her boyfriend?

IMO, the only way that this could be considered a punishment for Pain’s daughter is that she knew that there was a risk of pregnancy and still did the "do" regardless of the potential consequences. But how can we assume that a knowledge of this poential consequence was running through Bristol’s head at the time of this action?

We don’t. So we, the third parties, honestly can’t say that this is a punishment.

But if Obama has regularly educated his two daughters about the potential consequences, and then they engage in the "do" out of wedlock as minors without protection, then….well…..that’s a punishment.

However, if they do become pregnant, then – in the ideal of the women’s reproductive rights movement – it should be their own and exclusive decision on whether or not they’d engage in a procedure to abort the baby in the first trimester, neither the demand (or refusal) of the pregnancy’s other contributor (since it is left to wonder whether or not he will even stay on to raise the child) nor the parents of either participant.

So if Obama should be criticized over the content of his comments, then such criticism is best directed against his insistence that the pregnancy is a punishment from his prespective as the potential grandfather of a child out of wedlock, even if his daughter is residing in his house at the time of pregnancy. He’s not the mother of a uterus (he doesn’t even have a uterus), so it would seem fairly out of place for him to determine whether any pregnancy, even that of his own descendant, should be aborted.