In order to rebut the rumors, and (more likely) to save her daughter the humiliation of even worse headlines, Sarah Palin today released a statement that her 17-year-old daughter Bristol Palin is five months pregnant and plans to marry her boyfriend.

The McCain campaign reportedly knew about the pregnancy but didn't plan to disclose it to the world or think that it disqualified Sarah Palin (Bristol's mother) from running for the Vice Presidency.

Naturally, this has led many of the same people who spent the weekend trafficking in the rumors about Trig Palin — Sarah's infant son with Down's Syndrome — to crow wildly about how Bristol Palin, a fucking seventeen-year-old girl, if you've forgotten — is the new anti- poster child for abstinence-only education. Of course those claims are well-researched.

Because, for one, most schools in Alaska do teach comprehensive sex-ed, and the Alaska Department of Education & Early Development offers schools a choice of curricula that include programs focusing on abstinence without endorsing a specific program.

In fact, there have even been debates in Alaska since the start of Palin's tenure whether exempting children from comprehensive sex ed is constitutional. Palin's statements on abstinence-only education date to one questionnaire from a right-wing group during her campaign in 2006 when asked the following question:

"Will you support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?'

In answer to that leading question which conflates comprehensive sexual education with condom and Pill distribution, her campaign answered:

"Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support."

In the last year and a half, searches of her office's website and the Guttmacher Institute revealed no abstinence-only initiatives by her administration.

Simply put, Sarah Palin is by no means the world's biggest promoter of abstinence-only education, as some people are claiming. More...