Update: The BLOG is being updated on a daily basis, and there is a lot of new information here. We're trying to add it back onto the web site as well as we can, but for all the newest info check there first.
If you're looking for more information on this graphic, the BLOG is the place to be!
Why This Web site? A Summary
On August 29th, John McCain announced his selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for his vice presidential nominee. Within hours, the country was on a roller-coaster ride as rumors swept the Internet that she had faked a pregnancy, just five months previously, to cover for her seventeen-year-old daughter, Bristol. Then only one day later, the story was just as abruptly brought to a halt with the announcement that that same daughter Bristol was five months pregnant, thus ruling out her having given birth in mid-April.
Make no mistake here. What the McCain campaign did was nothing short of genius. Faced with some very reasonable questions about the circumstances surrounding Sarah Palin's giving birth in April of 2008, they managed to diffuse the entire controversy without ever releasing a single piece of information about Sarah Palin or the birth. Instead, the story was re-framed to be about a seventeen-year-old girl, and then, immediately became off-limits because, conveniently, families and children of candidates are off-limits. That they were able to get away with this switcheroo is astonishing. It seems to occur to almost no one that it was the McCain campaign that threw Bristol "under the bus" to begin with.
Many Internet sites that had given the story space pulled web pages down immediately. A few major media outlets that had started to look into the situation backed off. But was it the right choice? In spite of the fact that some of the pieces of evidence that initially got so much attention were shown to be false (particularly some photos of Bristol which allegedly showed a "baby bump" – to be clear, they did not) this abrupt about-face ignored the fact that many of the points raised were valid and some were quite troubling. They backed off, frankly, based on a single piece of evidence, and one for which no proof was given. The baby really did get thrown out with the bath water.
I've been investigating this for nearly a month now, and I cannot say that I know for sure what happened in Palmer Alaska on April 18th 2008. But as a medical professional who has spent much of my life around childbearing women I can state this with confidence: Her birth story is utterly absurd, a tale of an implausible series of ridiculous choices. If you want to call it "a lie," be my guest.
No 44 year old woman, pregnant for the fifth time with a special-needs child would make the decisions she made, and no doctor would support them. She traveled out of state during the 35th week of her pregnancy. After experiencing premature rupture of membranes and some contractions, she waited nearly ten hours to give a speech then traveled nearly twelve hours more, taking two separate flights both of which had flight times of around four hours, with a layover of approximately two hours in between. Expected duration of labor for someone with Gov. Palin's history (four previous vaginal births) would be 6 hours +/- 3.6 hours. It was not only "possible" that she would give birth long before she arrived back in Alaska, it was probable. And, while it's just barely believable that she would remain at a conference and wait to give a speech she was "determined to give" (since a modern hospital was only minutes away), there's no way one can apply this same reasoning to her subsequently getting on an airplane for two separate four-hour flights.
Yet, after somehow beating the statistics on the flights, once arriving in Anchorage, she did not drive to the only hospital in the state (Providence) with a neonatal intensive care unit (six miles from the airport) where her doctor had privileges. Instead, she drove an hour to a small regional health facility (only 39 beds in the whole hospital).
By the time she arrived there, she met five high-risk obstetric criteria:
*she was 44 (anything above 40(some sources say 37 or 39)) is considered high-risk due to maternal age;
*
she was carrying a known high-risk infant;
*she was considered "grand multiparous" (five or more viable pregnancies);
*
she was in labor at 35-36 weeks (anything before 37 weeks is considered pre term);
*
her amniotic sac had been ruptured nearly 24 hours.
Yet, the hospital that she is reported to have given birth at does no high risk obstetrics at all; even twins are not allowed to be born there. She had as her physician a family practice doctor who is reported on the hospital's web site as having done only three births in the previous two years!
None of these choices makes sense. Taken all together, it's ridiculous. And, to repeat, we're also supposed to believe that somewhere there is a doctor who went along with all this.
With this as the "starting point," then you have to start looking at all the other coincidences. Any one of these items, alone, could be easily shrugged off. Without a birth story that resembles Mr. Toad's Wild Ride more than anything else, one of two of these would be insignificant. But, all of this together? What are the chances?
* Gov. Palin never looked pregnant at all before the announcement, and even afterward people had their doubts. (One writer in the Anchorage Daily News asked facetiously one week after Gov. Palin's announcement, when she would have been around seven months, "Where is she hiding that baby? In her pocket?"), yet we have a photograph of her in her first pregnancy in which she looks... very conspicuously pregnant.
*Rumors existed before Gov. Palin announced her pregnancy on March 6th that Bristol was expecting. This has been confirmed by Palin's own spokesman. What did Palin do to counteract them? She told at least one person that it wasn't true. Wouldn’t it have been a lot more effective to appear in public – just one time - with your non-pregnant daughter?
*Bristol was removed from one school in late fall 2007, attended a second one sporadically until Christmas, but then was apparently out due to "mono" from Christmas on. (Correction: Further investigation has tracked down a credible sources that states as follows: Bristol Palin attended Wasilla High School for the fall semester, 2007. After the Christmas Holiday break she attended West High School in Anchorage for January and February 2008. She was removed from Anchorage West High School around March 1, 2008. The reason given among her friends that she had "finished early" due to taking "distance learning classes." I cannot find any "original" source for the idea that Bristol Palin had mono at any point. It was stated in the original Daily Kos blog / diary that broke the story on August 31, 2008, and seems to have been repeated widely, but the original source for this was and still is unknown to me.)
*Not one photo of the Palin family has been released from around the time of the birth, even though Palin has stated that all three of the Palin daughters were at the hospital.
*Palin's doctor, beyond some very brief (and frankly non-convincing) statements made last April in the first 2-3 days after the birth, has never once been willing to give the simplest statement to the press. Wouldn't having your doctor, perhaps accompanied by the hospital's CEO, do a press conference and announcing "Yes, I was at the birth of Trig Palin on April 18th, 2008, and Sarah Palin is Trig's biological mother." be preferable to telling the whole world that your seventeen-year-old daughter is pregnant? Wouldn't the doctor want to do that in the face of "ridiculous" "hurtful" and "insulting" rumors, and to spare Bristol the notoriety of becoming the most famous pregnant teen in America? Apparently not.
*Alaska Air officials, faced with the announcement of the birth on April 18th, made a point of stating that Sarah Palin's "stage of pregnancy" was not obvious on the flight the night before, nor were there any signs of labor or distress. They specifically called a news conference to do this.
*Gov. Palin has already been caught in numerous lies, exaggerations and "flip-flops" regarding the birth. She herself gave varying accounts in the first few days after the birth. She and her doctor put out statements concerning their interaction during the labor which contradicted each other directly. More recently, she told People Magazine (and others) that Willow spotted and asked about Trig's Down's syndrome as soon as she saw him in the hospital, which directly contradicts a statement given to the Anchorage Daily News three days after the birth which was that "you can't tell by looking" at that point that Trig has Down's.
Photos exist of a pregnant Gov. Palin that have widely touted as settling the issue as well. They do nothing of the sort. The allegation is that she faked a pregnancy. To fake a pregnancy one would have to do more than just talk; one would have to, at some point, look pregnant. Therefore, photos of her looking pregnant prove nothing. We would expect that there would be some photos of this nature. This never seems to occur to those who have turned to these photos as proof. However, curiously, these photos do show one thing: careful analysis of those that do exist from the period of 3/6 to 4/17 show an inexplicable variation in size, shape, and positioning of the pregnancy. Two photos exist taken only three days apart just ten days before the birth. In one Gov. Palin can barely get her arms and hands around her noticeably pregnant belly; in the other, she does so easily.
The announcement from the McCain campaign that Bristol is, as of September 1, five months pregnant put the brakes on the whole story, but it shouldn't have. Gov. Palin has used the fact that she gave birth to a child in April knowing that he had Down's as part and parcel of her political persona. This moves the whole issue out of the private realm, and into the public. In the face of legitimate evidence that the event did not happen the way she claims it did, the public does have the right to get some real answers. As of yet, we have not gotten them
Why am I doing this?
My husband and I are not "left wing bloggers," "conspiracy theorists," or otherwise fruitcakes. I am a childbirth labor coach, a published author in the childbirth field, and a lactation consultant; my husband is a physician who has, until this election, always voted Republican. So we're hardly coming from left field.
Shortly after the announcement of Palin's selection, rumors ran rampant on the Internet that she had not given birth to "Trig" but he was the child of her oldest daughter Bristol. Then – bang – in one fell swoop, the story was killed by the staggering announcement that Bristol was actually five months pregnant now, thus (very neatly) precluding her giving birth in mid April.
There are enough "anomalies" surrounding the pregnancy and birth last April that reasonable people can ask reasonable questions, and should be able to get answers without feeling like we're breaking some sort of national law or "picking on" a seventeen year old or a baby with Down's Syndrome. One right wing blogger suggested that there are just some things we have to accept on trust, this is one of them, and that's the end of it. Not to us. The story does matter... if she would lie about something like this, what else would she lie about?
Comment: In short, that Governor Palin, NOT her daughter, did give birth is now "proved" by two facts: the first is that Bristol Palin is currently expecting a child, and the second is that photos exist, reliably datable to March and April 2008 in which Gov. Palin definitely looks pregnant. Here is my response to both of these "proofs." First, how in the world do we know that Bristol Palin is five months pregnant now, other than the word of her parents? And she MUST be FIVE MONTHS (as of September 1, 2008) pregnant to preclude giving birth in April… if she is even 3 ½ months, it does not rule out that she could be Trig's mother. Secondly, photos exist of Sarah Palin appearing pregnant in March and April. What does this prove? Nothing. A quick internet search will reveal numerous "gag" sites which sell pregnancy suits, modeled by women all of whom … guess what? … appear very convincingly pregnant.
Comment: (September 16, 2008) A reader emailed me the following acerbic observation, further questioning the very convenient (for the campaign that is) timing. "Bristol Palin, it is claimed is five months pregnant. If she was announced to be four months pregnant, it would not have removed the doubt of her being the mother of Trig. If it was announced that she was six months pregnant, we would be looking for the physical evidence. It is only a five month pregnancy that does the trick of diverting attention from the first birth story without forcing Bristol to look pregnant. What a miraculous and fortuitous coincidence this is. They need her to be five months pregnant and suddenly she is five months pregnant. This is a miracle for Sarah Palin indeed!"
I knew nothing about Governor Palin. On the day of the announcement of her selection, the media was searching for any information at all. One item that was reported was that she had flown back from Texas to Alaska in labor with her fifth child after giving a speech. No doubt it was intended to show what a "trouper" she is, but as a woman who has had four home births myself, and attended many more, my "whoa" antennae shot up immediately. This seemed insane to me, though at the time I dismissed it as her showing really poor judgment and nothing else. Then, several days later the blogs went wild with the "baby swap" news, and a lot of things clicked for me.
Since then, it's been a roller-coaster ride. Numerous web sites have been changed. Pictures on, among other things, the official state of Alaska web site, have mysteriously disappeared. Blog posts are gone. Flickr accounts are gone. Police blotters have been changed.
Comment and Update: (September 15, 2008) Here's another web page that was posted early in sequence, with some good links and info. Most have been followed and reproduced elsewhere on this web site, but there is still some good analysis here.
One question that has been asked is - if this was possibly true - how in the world could she have hoped to "get away" with it? The answer is that all of us now are looking at this with twenty-twenty hindsight. When these events were occurring, although she had been mentioned (at least in Alaska) as a possible VP pick, on anyone's scorecard, she had to be the longest shot of all time. If she did fake her pregnancy to protect her daughter, she did this at a time that it would never have occurred to her that within five months she would be the subject of extreme national scrutiny, and facts and statements and situations would be checked and cross-checked for accuracy. She no doubt assumed she would be able to stonewall long enough for the story to die and that would be the end of it.
The goal of this web site is to summarize in one place - with no equivocation - what is known and what is not known. When something cannot be dated or verified, we intend to say so - and beg for reliable sources. When we're wrong, we'll say so.
Comment: I have already received one email claiming that I don't know what I am talking about as my math on the duration of pregnancy "doesn't add up." In fact, it does. Pregnancy is dated at 40 weeks in length, even though the "average" human gestation is actually only 38 weeks - 266 days. Based on an average menstrual cycle of 28 days with ovulation occurring 14 days into the cycle, on the day a woman conceives, she is "two weeks pregnant." Dumb, I know, but this is the time system that all medical professionals use. So, for example, when I said, above that "if she is even 3 1/2 months," this would mean that she is "14-15 weeks pregnant," but really only 12-13 weeks after conception. This is what a woman who conceived around the first of June would be on the first of September. A woman who conceived around the middle of April would be, on the first of September, around 22 weeks pregnant, but 20 weeks after conception - thus around "five months."