Abstinence Advocate Bristol Palin Announces Second Unplanned

Abstinence Advocate Bristol Palin Announces Second Unplanned Pregnancy

Absolutely.”

“I know this has been, and will be, a huge disappointment to my family, to my close friends, and to many of you,” she wrote.

BY KIA MAKARECHI

Bristol Palin, the daughter of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, announced on Thursday that she was pregnant with her second child out of wedlock.



“I wanted you guys to be the first to know that I am pregnant,” Palin wrote on her blog. “Honestly, I’ve been trying my hardest to keep my chin up on this one.”



The news comes just one month after Palin suddenly called off her wedding to Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer, which had been scheduled for May 23. Palin did not comment on the identity of the father in her blog post.



Palin announced that she was pregnant with her first child, Tripp Palin, during her mother’s campaign for the vice-presidency. Palin was 17 at the time. She was twice engaged to Tripp’s father, Levi Johnston, but both engagements were broken off. (Johnston married a different woman in 2012.)



“I know this has been, and will be, a huge disappointment to my family, to my close friends, and to many of you,” she wrote on Thursday. “But please respect Tripp’s and my privacy during this time. I do not want any lectures and I do not want any sympathy.”



Since her first pregnancy, Palin has made a career out of campaigning for abstinence. In 2011, it was widely reported that she was paid $262,500 from the Candie’s Foundation, a non-profit organization that fights teen pregnancy by supporting abstinence work. Palin is also listed as an expert on abstinence on the Web site of Single Source Speakers, a booking agency.



Palin’s message, however, has been inconsistent. In a February 2009 interview with Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, she said that while she’s pro-abstinence, she takes a more realistic view. “I think abstinence is, like—like, the—I don't know how to put it—like, the main—everyone should be abstinent or whatever, but it's not realistic at all,” she said, according to a transcript of the interview. Three months later, she had sharpened her message: “Regardless of what I did personally, I just think that abstinence is the only . . . 100 percent foolproof way to prevent pregnancy.”



She has since said that she wishes she had waited until she was in a stable relationship before becoming pregnant the first time. “My life, my teenage years were cut completely short. I was on the fast track to adulthood just in an instant because of that one decision,” Palin told CNN in 2011. “And Tripp is just the love of my life. He is everything to me. But do I wish that he had a dad that was involved in his life? Absolutely. And do I wish that I had an education and a real career path?

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