By Ken Shepherd
Media Research Center
March 13, 2009

With the writing style and gravitas worthy of a high school newspaper columnist, PBS "To the Contrary" host and US News & World Report columnist Bonnie Erbe slammed Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in her March 12 column, pitting her against her daughter Bristol who "displays a lot more personal maturity and decision-making ability than her mother" as evidenced by the breaking off of her engagement with boyfriend Levi Johnston.

Although Erbe is not a relationship expert or couples therapist, she plays one on the Internet (emphases mine):

[T]he youthful pair never looked like a loving couple. They looked like what they were: two sexually active teens who happened to "hook up" but had nothing beyond that in common. Besides, who wants to marry the son of a woman who's brought up on drug charges?

[...]

From where I sit, Bristol should have been using birth control, and never should have gotten pregnant in the first place. If she weren't the progeny of abstinence-only education supporters, she might have been on the pill or using a diaphragm, or might even have been able to use Plan B, the so-called morning after pill. It's a shame for poor Bristol who has some wisdom and spunk to her. She said in interviews she's not ready to be a mother and it's not a glamorous endeavor.

So let me get this straight. Bristol Palin is nothing more than a hornball teenager who had an emotionally-devoid sexual fling with the son of a druggie and thanks to her mom's political views on abstinence education, was virtually doomed to an unwanted pregnancy.

Yet somehow this hormone-addled sex fiend is a much more mature decision maker than her mother?

But who needs logic when your aim is to trash social conservatives who believe in abstinence education?:

It's a shame for the baby, to be born to unwed teen parents who are ill-equipped to parent at that young age. It's a shame all around, as is abstinence-only education.

Erbe, you may recall, is the same columnist who railed about how requiring pre-abortion procedure ultrasounds are "invasive attack[s]" on women.

—Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters