While most of America is still left wondering about the new Miss America’s response about birth control being a “controlled substance”, one unwed young mom is raking in the big bucks in speaking fees primarily because she is probably the most famous teen mom in the US. Bristol Palin won’t be making quite as much cash as her mom, but will be taking in somewhere between 15-20,000 for each speaking engagement.

What is up with that? Bristol got into the national spotlight for being a pregnant teenager who was pretending to be engaged to a guy she and her family are now suing for custodial rights for their son. Are she and her abstinence-only education message what teenagers really need to hear about?

Bristol Palin’s message says nothing about birth control. I believe that her basic spiel is: I had sex, got pregnant, but it’s ok because my mom is rich and famous. Don’t have sex. That makes her about as good of a role model as everyone’s favorite heiress: Paris Hilton.

I don’t think so. Do you know what is not fail-safe but works about a gazillion times better than abstinence-only education? Birth Control. Not just sex education which includes information about birth control, but easy access to birth control for teenagers, even in small towns like Wasilla.

I know of two pregnant teenagers at the moment. Both were in relationships and both are nice girls. One is from a small town where everybody knows everybody’s business. At the age of 15, which is when this particular girl got pregnant, it’s sometimes embarrassing for teenaged girls to buy tampons, so it’s probably not all that easy for them to brave their local doctor’s office and pharmacy to get birth control.

I don’t know the specifics of the other girl’s story, but I am guessing that her boyfriend pressured her into having sex without birth control.

Having idiots like Bristol Palin advise them to do as I say but not as I do is ridiculous. Just the fact that Bristol is now able to get rich off her pregnancy gives the impression that teenage pregnancy is somehow glamorous, if not lucrative, when the opposite is the case. Personally, I would rather hear from a real-life teen-aged mom about the difficulties of going to school while trying to support a child than Bristol Palin, her mother, or anyone associated with the entire clan.