Bristol Palin Promotes Sexual Abstinence

RedTracker Slate’s Double X asks if Bristol Palin is really a good spokeswoman for abstinence. Palin is not only an unwed mother but suing her baby’s father for child support. Bristol Palin acknowledges her ‘mistakes’ but insisted on Oprah that she will remain true to her second virginity until marriage.

If the statistics are anything to go on, Bristol is unlikely to meet her goal of remaining celibate. According to Mark Regnerus, the author of the forthcoming Premarital Sex in America, among women who made virginity pledges and are now married, only 13. 9 percent waited until their wedding night to have sex. There aren’t good data on women who make virginity pledges after they are sexually active—who try to become “secondary virgins,” as researchers put it. What we do know is that some young women—often born-again Christians, like Bristol—believe that repledging virginity can erase their sexual histories. These teens “typically reconcile their memories with their present beliefs,” according to a study called Reborn a Virgin: Adolescents’ Retracting of Virginity Pledges and Sexual Histories, published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2006. This mind set would mean that Bristol could think of herself as pure again, despite her sexual relationship with Levi. via DoubleX