Bristol Palin today embarked on Abstinence Tour 2009, making appearances on Good Morning America and the Today show followed by a town hall chat for teens.
The 19-year-old mom and daughter of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was in New York today to talk about her new role as spokeswoman for the Candie's Foundation, which looks to educate kids on the consequences of teen pregnancy. Her message was practically identical for them all.
"Having a baby is a huge responsibility, and I think that you should wait to have sex," she summarized before several hundred teens at the conclusion of the event for which she shared the stage with Heroes star Hayden Panettiere.
"There's one way to prevent [teen pregnancy], and that's not having sex," she told Chris Cuomo on GMA. "I do think it's realistic. It's definitely the harder choice, but it's the safer choice. It's the best choice."
Her baby daddy, Levi Johnston, disagreed with her on the Early Show.
"Abstinence is a great idea, but I also think that you need to enforce, you know, condoms and birth control and other things like that to have safe sex," he said. "I don't think just telling young kids, 'you can't have sex'—it's not going to work. It's not realistic."
Panettiere was on Johnston's side during the Candie's Foundation chat.
"I know there's a lot of different viewpoints on sex, and I'm not someone who will ever pooh-pooh anything or say this is not right or this is wrong," the 19-year-old told E! News beforehand. "Just do what you're going to do, as long as you're safe. As long as you're smart.
"I think it's very nice that [Palin] came out to support this. It's nice to have her and the teenagers get to look at her and she can say, 'This happened to me.' "
Only, Panettiere had so much to say to the room full of teens, she hardly let the official spokeswoman, well, speak. Occasionally, she'd pipe in after one of the actress's lengthy monologues.
"I would think it was weird if I was walking down the hallway [at school] and one of my peers was pregnant," Panettiere admitted, asking the high schoolers, "Do you look at her and think, 'Thank goodness that's not me'?"
The student responded nonchalantly, explaining that schools provide day care.
"I think it's just more common now," Palin said. "It's accepted, yeah."
Finally, when she was given the opportunity to open her mouth, Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston's mom admitted the drawbacks to parenthood.
"You have so much responsibility," she said, much as she did over and over on the morning shows. "It's a 24-hours-a-day job. You don't have friends, you can't get up and go to the movies. It completely puts your life on the fast track."
(Originally published May 6, 2009, at 12:26 p.m. PT)
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