Bristol Palin's real baby

Reuters:

The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.

Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin's five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.

"We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us," the Palins' statement said.

"Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support," the Palins said.

The Palins asked the news media to respect the young couple's privacy.

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Senior McCain campaign officials said McCain knew of the daughter's pregnancy when he selected Palin last week as his vice presidential running mate, deciding that it did not disqualify the 44-year-old governor in any way.

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It appears that the Palins are giving the campaign a twofer on the abortion issue. I am sure they would have preferred that Bristol wait until she was married to have children, but no one in this family thinks that she is being "punished" with a baby as Obama implied on the abortion issue in this campaign. The Palins believe that children are a gift from God instead of a punishment. I think the abortion issue just got much harder for the Democrats.

BTW, since the report says that Bristol is five months pregnant it is inconceivable that she was Trig's mother four months ago as suggested in the left wing blogs. What kind of people come up with this sort of suggestion?

You can see the reaction of Christian leaders here.

A reporter for Time visiting Wasilla says:

So his name is Levi.

That's about the only thing that I didn't know about Bristol Palin's pregnancy. The rest of the details I picked up almost without trying, while talking about other things with townsfolk — some who know the governor and her family well, some who don't. It was, more or less, an open secret. And everyone was saying the same thing: the governor's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, the father is her boyfriend, and it's really nobody's business beyond that.

I happen to agree.

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I just got off the phone with a longtime Wasilla resident. She had urged me to find time today to go up to Hatcher Pass—"the most beautiful place in the valley!"—when I mentioned that the story on Bristol's baby is now national news. Her voice slowed. "Oh," she said. "I'm so sorry. That's so unfair."

Wasilla seems at times to be utterly without guile. It's a large part of the town's charm, and it's exactly the quality that could make an unorthodox pick like Palin pay off. Don't get me wrong — she's a tough politician with sharp enough elbows on her own. But still, she appears to be more steeped in the values of her hometown than any politician I've ever come across.

Maybe that means Palin is a little too much Northern Exposure for America—after all, her father's good friend Curt Menard happily showed me a picture of the governor as a high schooler in 1981, in a root cellar with family and friends, helping skin and cube and cure a whole moose. It's enough to make you almost miss fake hunters like John Kerry and Mitt Romney.

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You will want to read all of Nathan Thornburgh's story in Time. It is clear that he likes Wasilla and its people. I think it is the authenticity, not just of the real hunters, but how they relate to life.

Obama tells people to back off the story on Bristol Palin and reminds people that his mother was 18 when he was born.