An open letter to Bristol Palin

Dear Bristol,

Congratulations on the birth of your son, Tripp. Along with the rest of the nation I have seen his adorable picture on the news and I imagine you are about as proud and loving as any young mother could be. I applaud you for your difficult decision to go through with the pregnancy and I wish you nothing but the best going forward.

But I really wish you wouldn’t have said on Fox News that “…abstinence (for teens) is not realistic at all.” Sure it’s more and more accepted for teenagers to be sexually active today than it was in the past. Sure you live in a culture that is saturated with youthful sexuality. Sure just about everyone gets involved, and an unplanned pregnancy could happen to just about anybody. But abstinence for teenagers is not unrealistic. That means it’s not practical — but it is. And it’s possible.

It’s possible for teenagers to make tough decisions and stick with them. It’s possible for young adults to make a commitment to important standards they believe in and then to live by them. Young people are not helpless victims of their own biology, unable to make choices and set limits. They are not pawns of contemporary media or the entertainment industry and they are not compelled to follow the script of the latest blockbuster movie. Your generation is powerful — more informed, more intelligent and more resourced than any generation before you. You guys can make great decisions and accomplish just about anything you decide to.

Bristol, I am not from your generation, I am, in fact, older than your mother. But before you disregard what I have to say as idealistic or old-fashioned, please understand that I have a lot of young people in my life. They are my neighbors, my family members, the children of my friends and an odd assortment of other random young people I am lucky enough to know. We hang out together a lot — we go camping, biking and canoeing together. We travel together and we talk about life and love and sex… and just about everything else.

A lot of the young people I know believe that abstinence is not unrealistic. In fact they don’t just believe it, they live it out. Every day. In middle school, high school, college and even beyond, there are a lot of young people who have made a firm decision for abstinence and they stick by it. Is it easy? Of course not, it’s really, really, really hard — but they do it. They do it for a variety of reasons; some do it for religious reasons, others have decided to totally focus on their studies because they have a big goal — like medical or law school — in mind, and some are just getting their careers off to a good start.

I watch them struggle to stay true to their own convictions. I watch them wrestle with the daily dilemmas that so powerfully draw them in, resist the compromises that would be so easy to make, and sometimes, I watch them endure the ridicule of their peer groups because of it. I think these young people are incredibly courageous. What they are doing is super hard, but it’s also realistic, and it’s very practical.

Now that Tripp is here, you probably wouldn’t change a thing, because you can’t imagine a world without him in it. And I trust that with the loving support of your family, you will become a fantastic mom. I’m rooting for you all the way.

But I wish that the next time you go on national news to speak out about teen pregnancies, you’d give some positive recognition to the thousands and thousands of young people out there who have made a commitment to abstinence and are keeping it. They are heroes in my book and they deserve a whole lot of credit.

Respectfully,

Dana S. Brumitt

Orono, Minn.