This Is The Right Response

Obama:

At a brief press availability in Monroe, Mich., ABC News asked Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., if he had any response to Gov. Sarah Palin's statement that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant.

"Let me be a clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people's families are off limits," Obama said, "and people's children are especially off limits.

"This shouldn't be part of our politics," he continued, "It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president.

"And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories," he said. "You know my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and, you know, teenage children, that shouldn't be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that's off limits."

Absolutely. This type of gossip and innuendo does have no place in our politics.

Women's issues and family issues have a place in our politics to the extent that I believe that nobody can demand from the perch of the federal government how families should organize themselves. As the McCain-Palin ticket wishes to do that to the country, that's fair game for criticism. A teen mother is not, and any speculation about her motives or decision-making is just that, speculative. Palin's radical extremism is the reason for concern, not her home life.