Dear Meghan McCain,
You sure set the woods on fire, girl... I just read your blazing editorial for The Daily Beast: "The GOP Doesn't Understand Sex."
Good golly.
You demanded that conservatives get real and support birth control!
It took ovarian nerve to do this.
Congratulations! You're the first adult child of a Presidential candidate to not pretend you're an unmarried virgin.
Many of your readers got goose bumps as you wrote it: "Daughters of Republican politicians aren’t expected to have sex, let alone enjoy it— as if there were some strange chastity belt automatically attached to us female offspring."
We love to hear you smash that ball and chain.
You decried the spectacle of Bristol Palin promoting abstinence when only weeks ago, the young lass admitted on national TV that abstinence "wasn't realistic."
I'm sure you'd rather never hear another Palin Bedtime Story again... but it was, sadly, your father's campaign who decided to put blow up the Palins' Sex Life like a balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.
But let's get back to your frank declaration: Birth Control = Good Idea.
You write: "My parents raised me to know that, regardless of the mistakes I might make, they would allow me the dignity and courage to make my own choices. That’s the kind of trust my parents have always placed in their children—yet the GOP still needed to get involved and have a say in what I did with my body."
I believe you! I know you appreciate all the power that having control over your uterus brings to your future. I know you're embarrassed that the GOP religious zealots have exploited this issue to sadistic proportions.
There's just a couple hitches. I can't be the first to point them out to you.
You say, that "As a Republican, I am pro-life."
Huh? I think you need to have a little talk with your ghost writer. The GOP doesn't have a membership requirement that its voters oppose abortion.
Furthermore, ff there were a test to eliminate Republican voters who had abortions, or helped pay for abortions, your party would be wiped out. Miscarriage, accidental pregnancy, abortion, birth, all of these are normal experiences over the course of human life.
You seem like a bright woman— how can you write that "using birth control and having an abortion are not the same at all."
!!!
Surely you understand when one attempt fails, the other becomes a possibility.
Meghan, how many of your friends say, "I don't use regular birth control— I just get an abortion whenever I get knocked up. What a breeze! Me so horny!"
This carefree ditzy abortion-floozy doesn't exist except in the patriarchal nut-job imagination.
You're adamant that your privacy and dignity are essential. It's no one else's business. What you describe in terms of your self-determination is known in the field as "pro-choice."
The pro-life rug doesn't match your drapes.
Your progressive candor is repeatedly interrupted by the oddest outbursts, like when you wrote that, "True, abstinence is the only way to fully prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases."
Whoops! That is false! I'm sorry, you've just lost the final round!
Abstinence is an intention, a vow— not a method to prevent pregnancy. As a practice, it's the absolute WORST, most failure-ridden notion of "birth control" ever recorded. Even a dried-up old "Today Sponge" is better than abstinence!
Can't you see where this is going? If you're on the Pill, even if you have regretful sex, or get "carried away," you won't pregnant. If you use a condom, even if you're drunk or distressed, you won't get pregnant. Your IUD or diaphragm won't "fail" even if things get messy. With an actual "method," you're 90-something-percent likely to prevent pregnancy no matter what you "believe."
If you have faith in fairies or abstinence, however, your odds go down the drain.
What if you were raped or coerced into sex? Most annoying of all, what if you had an accident that impaired the birth control you did use? It happens all the time, especially to married couples, Meghan! Ask your parents!
In any case, I bet you're aware of Plan B, the pill that prevents the fertiized egg's implantation. It's one of the most important pharmaceutical developments of your generation.
You're not joining some idiotic "abstinence" junket. So take the next step. If you're for birth control, then you understand the cycle of life and that abortion is an event that could occur in any woman's life. You understand that if you take "birth control" seriously, it's not a church and chastity belt.
It must be sweet for your parents to hear you say, "The key [to ending unwanted pregnancy] is communication between parents and children." But I don't think you'd want to be stuck behind a locked door if the "communication" failed.
Let's cut the infantilization crap; I know you want to. A great many of the people having "unwanted pregnancies" are full-grown adults in longtime relationships— marriages!— who are not having a chat with their parents about what to do next!
Even if isolated teens were your only concern, the chats with mom and dad are no help if there isn't public policy that supports sex education and reproductive health in women's self-interest.
I'm impressed you walked away from the Vatican, James Dobson, and Phyllis Schlafly. You damned the WASP torpedoes and declared "sex is natural." We aren't used to Republicans saying wild and crazy things like that! A young woman no less...
You'll take the standard slut-beating for this little editorial— and feminists will be the ones who have your back.
Your birth control lovin' sister,
Susie Bright
Photograph: KPA/Zuma/Rex Features
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