The Temptation of Sarah Palin

She has become a stereotypical figure--loved or reviled, depending on the beholder's politics--but the other day, for a brief moment, Sarah Palin let herself be seen as a human being with complicated emotions.

The Alaska governor made news by telling a right-to-life meeting that, after learning of abnormalities in the child she was bearing last year, she had for "a fleeting moment" considered abortion.

Palin was emphasizing that she had decided to have the baby, but her description of the inner turmoil in making up her mind had none of the usual pit-bull-with-lipstick comedy of her public persona.

The results of the amniocentesis, she said, "blew me away, rocked my world" and helped her understand "the complexities of what a woman goes through."

Palin went on to explain that no one, not even her husband knew ("I was out-state, nobody knows") and it would have been "easy to make it all go away, take care of it."

The disclosure of such feelings answers a pathologist's question of why, given her convictions, Palin would have undergone amniocentesis, in which "more normal fetuses would be aborted by the procedure than would abnormal ones be detected."

Clearly, as a 44-year-old career woman with four children, Palin was worried about the pregnancy--as most people in her position would be--and it is touching to hear her describe the inner turmoil over it in human terms, even if only to make a political point.

By the end of this excursion into reality, the governor was back to her usual breeziness, telling the audience she had thought, "I was old. Very funny, God. My name is Sarah, but my husband is not Abraham."

But it was nice to see, if only for "a fleeting moment," a real person behind the improbable public figure.

Medical Question for Gov. Palin

A noted pathologist and professor of medicine is curious about how they practice in Alaska:

"While Gov. Palin is being praised for choosing to proceed with her pregnancy despite a pre-natal diagnosis of Down syndrome, why was the procedure performed in the first place?

"Amniocentesis is employed in older mothers to detect genetic abnormalities (as it did here) so that abortion can be considered as an option. It is not recommended for younger women because the danger to the fetus outweighs the possible 'benefit' to be gained through detection of genetic abnormality. In other words, more normal fetuses would be aborted by the procedure than would abnormal ones be detected.

"Since Gov. Palin's convictions precluded the possibility that she would decide to abort the fetus irrespective of the outcome of the amniocentesis test, why did she subject her unborn child to the very real risk of death that this procedure carries?"

Is there an Alaskan doctor in the house to explain it?