Can I mention that this is the Plot of Desperate Housewives, 3rd season?

****OK, I know I said the best thing to do was to ignore Palin, but the stories going around that she essentially faked the birth of her fifth child, the down's syndrome baby, are really too good to pass up. I'm really, really, pissed off over all the right's anti choice triumphalism and Palin. Despite right wing propaganda abortion isn't a sacrament in the liberal church. There are plenty of pro-choice women and men who have chosen to give birth to, and care for, children who were "not perfect." Not only that, but there are, as I pointed out over at LGM, literally thousands of gays and lesbians, liberal single dads and moms, who have gone out of their way to adopt or foster children with developmental or social difficulties of all kinds. Not only do liberals, gays, and lesbians value the lives of their own biological children, they actually have proven again and again that they value and even exalt, protect and love the lives that other members of this majority christian society have thrown away in the foster care system.

Its unclear whether Palin even knew, before the birth, that the child would have Downs. More... If she didn't have testing, they may not have known, in which case she doesn't get any credit for making a decision of any kind. She simply went through with what she thought of as an ordinary pregnancy, and made the kind of mental and emotional adjustments that women do when they realize that the child they have isn't going to be exactly like other children. I've known plenty.

So I'm less than impressed with Palin's anti-abortion cred. And I'm not alone--see this commenter over at my old women's board. She's liberal, but not the sharpest or most reliable tack on the board, and yet she nails it:

And fawning over her b/c she decided not to abort her down syndrome baby. Another WTF. Many more parents with kids with much more severe issues than that. And give me a fucking medal too then...I refused all prenatal testing (but ultrasound) even though I was 40yo and pregnant with DS - I decided the chance of losing the baby with an amnio (1 in 200) was not worth the chance, given the only thing they can really detect is DS. And would never consider an abortion for a DS kid. Yet I'm a diehard liberal pro-choice woman. Just waiting for them to spin her as some freaking perfect mother, as if she is the only one to decide to keep a DS baby.

As for the fake pregnancy story: See here and here. If its true that her waters broke a month early while she was on a political trip in Texas and she and her husband chose to have her a) make the speech and b) get on an eight hour flight back to Alaska, followed by a long drive back to Wasilla, before giving birth to the baby in a small local hospital then she was either trying to abort that baby by neglecting ordinary standards of medical care or she wasn't actually pregnant and was trying to get back to the hospital in time to receive the baby her 16 year old daughter was having. I had "low amniotic fluid" and they wanted to give me a c section *while I was in labor*. No one leaks amniotic fluid a month early and doesn't rush to the nearest hospital.

aimai


***Oh, forgot my real purpose in posting which was to beg Tbogg to bring back America's Worst Mother (tm) and her children--he won't even need to make up names for trig, track, willow and palindrome.