Palin says she’s released her medical records “proving” she actually gave birth to her fifth child, Trig.

But is it true?

No.  It’s not.

Palin never released her medical records, despite written demands by more than 2,700 physicians that she do so.    The two-page letter Palin did release (instead of medical records) just hours before the actual election, is written by an Alaskan doctor who, no longer treating Palin, carefully defines herself as the “Palin family physician.” In it, we learn the unsurprising news that Trig “was born” and was “able to go home at two days of age with his mother.”

But just who might “mother” be?

Is Trig’s biological mother Governor Palin, or, as Palin says herself, “one of her daughters?”   She says she is the mom.  Bristol Palin, aged 17, unmarried, and also pregnant, is usually named. 

Yet, the speculation continues by bloggers and traditional news organiations.   Why does Palin not simply release her medical records and end the speculation?  Palin can hide behind her privacy rights (a rather ironic position, since the U.S. Supreme Court based its Roe v. Wade abortion ruling on privacy rights), but serious politicians contending for the vice presidency are held to a high standard of public disclosure about their medical conditions.  Palin, as a woman who chose to run, should get no special pass.  Nor should Palin’s public waiver of her juvenile daughter, Bristol’s, privacy rights get her off the hook. 

Palin officially announced, at the Republican National Convention, no less, that Bristol was currently pregnant to dispel rumors that she, rather than Governor Palin, had given birth to Trig.  As people started to do the math, questions arose about whether Bristol could have two pregnancies in such close succession.

The answer is, yes.  And the odds of this for a fertile, sexually active 17-year-old girl are greater than they are for a 44-year-old woman becoming naturally pregnant even once and bringing the fetus to term.

Palin blames “the media” for persistant questions about who is Trig’s biological mother:  “[T]hings…could have, should have been so easily corrected if—if the media would have taken one step further and—and investigated a little bit.”  Of course, since she arrived on the national scene, Palin’s not lost a minute to blame “the media” for her woes—a practice so common among pols resentful of scrutiny that, for reporters, it “almost has a homey feel to it,” wrote the New York Times. 

Anytime Palin chooses to release her records, “the media” will happily examine them and “correct” the rumors haunting Palin.  Until she does, though, no amount of extra “investigation” is as reliable, or worth the time.  Has Palin ever waived her right to physician-patient confidentiality?  No.  She only “authorized” the “Palin family physician” to write a letter.

Such a letter is not a medical record.  Rather, it is a letter about medical records.  Why is the difference important? 

Medical records tell with great certainty who gave birth to whom, and what the circumstances were.  Medical records clearly identify attending physicians.  Doctors get into grave legal trouble for forging or altering them, so most are reluctant to take such steps. 

What keeps Palinologists’ eyebrows raised is that, from the moment Palin publicly announced her pregnancy at seven months, few people believed her.

Startled reporters and incredulous aids greeted Palin’s news with stunned silence.  “You’re kidding,” said one incredulous reporter, staring at Palin’s flat abdomen.  Most of the people attending Palin’s baby shower shortly after Trig’s birth—including her own friends and relatives-- had no idea that Palin had even been pregnant.   “Unbelievable!” the Anchorage Daily News reported on the buzz from Palin’s friends and associates. 

Alaskan television and radio reporters called Palin’s pregnancy news “a bombshell” because it was so completely unexpected. 

These and other perplexed witnesses aren’t the “pajama-clad bloggers living in their parents’ basements” Palin so derides.  Many are women familiar with pregnancy.  One, Mary Nelson, who exclaimed “Really?  No!” when she heard Palin’s pregnancy news, is a respected Alaskan state representative who was then pregnant herself.  Another Alaskan politico, Senate President Lyda Green, remarked, “She’s very well-disguised.  When I was with five months pregnant, there was absolutely no question that I was with child.”  Still another is Hawaiian Governor Linda Lingle, who was with Palin at the Republican Governors Association Energy Conference where Palin insisted upon staying and delivering a luncheon keynote address even after she started feeling unusual pains, and then her water broke (or “leaked,” as Palin puts it)—a situation that can endanger a child in utero. “Nobody knew a thing,” Lingle remarked.  

Even the flight crew of the Alaskan Airlines jet had no idea that Palin was pregnant and supposedly about to deliver a child.  Had they known, they likely would not have allowed Palin to board the plane.  “The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation,” Caroline Boren, the airline’s spokeswomen, baldly stated.  

Israeli filmmaker Frank Elan spent several hours with Palin when she traveled from Alaska to Los Angeles in March, 2007, supposedly in her seventh month.  “I met her in my Hollywood office,” he recalled, “and we talked for over an hour” about making a documentary.  Elan readily decided to film her.  “The funny thing is,” Elan recalls, “that a few days later I got an email from a friend in Alaska telling me she [Palin] was seven months pregnant.  I didn’t notice a thing until later, when we were filming.”

But Elan’s video raises more questions than it answers.  In footage shot about 10 days before Trig’s birth (and later sold to FOX, which repackaged it as “Sarah Palin: An American Woman”), Palin does not appear pregnant, although she does mention, in a squeaky voice, that she is having “a boy,” and later stretches back for a microsecond to reveal a tiny tummy bump that looks nothing like a seven months’ gestating baby.  Most of Elan’s footage used by FOX shows Palin only from the neck up, and is often angled so that Palin’s torso is seldom seen.

Alaskans were incredulous.  “She simply doesn’t look pregnant,” insisted the Anchorage Daily News.  The ADN reported that Palin’s pregnancy claim “astonished reporters and others in the Capitol, who had no clue the governor was expecting.”  Yet, frame after frame of Elan’s video shows Palin still wearing her “camouflage” outfit of a long, floppy multi-colored scarf.  Why bother hiding her belly, if everyone already knew?

Could it be because Palin still, at almost 8 months, did not physically appear to be carrying a baby?  And might that mean that Palin was not, in fact, pregnant?

Is Palin lying?

Newsweek reporter Karen Breslau, who’s met Palin several times and also interviewed her—in Palin’s seventh month--in Los Angeles at the “Women And Leadership Event” Newsweek sponsored, similarly remarked that Palin did not then appear to be at all pregnant.  Breslau only learned of Palin’s pregnancy because “[a]n aide [of Palin’s] called me the next day to tell me that Palin would be announcing her pregnancy at home in Alaska and that she [Palin] had wanted me to know as a courtesy.  She was sorry she hadn’t mentioned it the night before.”    In fact, Palin sat for a lengthy interview in front of Breslau and was filmed wearing black panty hose and sexy, shiny black leather boots—accessories not impossible to wear late in pregnancy, but not usually worn by then due to swelling.  In response to Breslau’s questions, Palin insisted that her children had not impeded her political life.  She complained that “some Neanderthals” questioned her ability to be governor and also mother toddler Piper.  Why not then mention being pregnant at this forum?

Two KTLA reporters similarly failed to observe that the woman sitting before them—already shortlisted for the GOP vice presidential ticket--was in an advanced stage of pregnancy.  Pregnancy would certainly be as newsworthy as what the reporters did question Palin about--her admitted use of marijuana.  Palin laughed, replied that marijuana was a legal drug in Alaska at the time, and said she’d admitted it earlier because she was “tryin’ to be honest about things.”

Either way, two questions arise.

If Palin hid her pregnancy but still insisted that she should not be treated any differently, then why did she hide it?  And if Palin was only pretending to be pregnant, then why would she do that? 

The first question, coupled with Palin’s initial secrecy, stated penchant for vigorous exercise, heavy interstate travel, and ignoring of labor pains and leaking amniotic fluid, indicates a disregard for her fetus that could have produced a miscarriage, stillbirth, or some other fetal harm.  Why risk her unborn child’s life to, as Palin put it, “deliver a speech” or blow off job tension “even as an old pregnant lady” by aerobics and weight-lifing?  What speech or job could possibly be more important than a child’s life, for a pro-life candidate? 

Palin’s additional claim that her husband wanted the baby born in Alaska rather than Texas   is even more absurd.  Why risk an infant’s life, the health of the mother, and the security of a commercial aircraft and its passengers and crew to bring one more “native-born” Alaskan in the world?  And even if Palin was simply so hapless, one must ask: Do conservative voters really want such an ignorant, self-serving person in the vice presidency or presidency?

The second question brings Palin’s mental health into focus: Is Palin sane enough for higher office?  Does Palin have some psychological condition whereby she pretended to be pregnant?  There is an infant, so we know someone was pregnant.  But the circumstances of Trig’s birth raise the issue of whether Palin actually gave physical birth, or someone else—Palin’s juvenile, unwed daughter, Bristol—did.  And these questions aren’t limited to pajama-clad bloggers.  Newsweek raised them,   with photographs of Bristol, after Palin became the Republican candidate.  The Daily Kos  merely commented on the rumors that had swirled around Alaska for months earlier.  Did Palin, then only a governor, hope to shield her unwed, underage daughter from criticism?  Or did she hope to protect her own reputation as a mother who could, impossibly, “do it all?”

The second question raises serious doubts as to Palin’s honesty and judgment.

This is why Palin’s medical records are important.  Apart from DNA tests, Palin’s medical records are, in fact, the only confirmation that she is telling the truth. 

Why do we care?

We care because Republican leaders keep telling us that Palin will likely lead the 2012 ticket.   We care because Palin disrupted the pre-planned agenda of the Republican National Convention  over issues of her and Bristol’s pregnancies—issues that could easily have been worked out in advance, had the Palins not been so secretive.    We care because elections are expensive, and Palin cost candidate Senator John McCain and the GOP huge losses with the female swing vote—a fact that Palin denies. We care because we know the GOP’s “base” is not a unified block of conservatives, but a hodge-podge of inconsistent true believers —some value anti-abortion stances, so Palin may gain their support, but these same conservatives may also take a dim view of illegitimacy, teenage marriage, under-education and unemployment, all of which are raised by the Palins’ family choices.    

We care because somewhere, there is a medical record that will show whether Palin is Trig’s biological mother.  Who could gain access to that record?  A surprising number of people—acting illegally, of course, unless Palin consents.  How will Palin respond?  Might there be some other accessible private record, such as a birth certificate, a medical insurance form, or perhaps the fact that no such form was used or benefit applied for, that would indicate who gave birth to whom? 

Somebody besides Palin knows the truth.  And that is the biggest reason for Palin to release her medical records immediately.  If the truth is as Palin declares, then things are fine.  But if the truth is different, then Palin’s problem will become the Party’s problem and from there, perhaps, America’s problem. 

So, if Palin loves her party, and there’s no truth to the rumors, why not just release her medical records right now?  

Palin’s own words indicate that she’s confused about what she’s done.  She’s not even sure whether she “hid” her pregnancy or not.  In Elan’s video, Palin contradicts herself in mid-sentence, almost uninterruptedly, saying: “In fact, I didn’t tell anybody I was pregnant until last month, and I hid it until last month, and then, didn’t, didn’t even purposely really try to hide it, just, uhm, my abs were tight and I could hide it until this month, and there was no way….”

Elsewhere, Palin conversely states, unequivocally, that she “never” hid her condition  or was concerned that pregnancy would cause her to be taken less seriously professionally.  According to the Anchorage Daily News: “As for her recent news that she is pregnant with her fifth child, Palin says it never played a part in any thoughts she has entertained about a hypothetical vice presidential bid.  ‘I'm very confident that a pregnant woman should not and doesn't have to be prohibited from doing anything, including running for vice president,’ Palin said. ‘Or working in the home or out of the home. The world is our oyster also, whether carrying a baby or not.’ 

Will the real Sarah Palin please stand up?

Palin’s fifth pregnancy was so strange a tale, it’s hard to swallow.  Her own father, Chuck Heath, chatting with reporters shortly after Trig’s birth, remarked of his daughter’s arduous journey from Texas to give birth in Alaska: “ She traveled, well, well, she was at that convention, traveled all night, gave birth this morning, what have you….”

“What have you” indeed.  What exactly do Republicans have in Governor Palin?

She signed Trig’s birth announcements as “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father,” and wrote the text in the “voice” of  God.   Can’t get more maverick than that!

This week, Palin addressed the issue of her candor, mocking “some of the goofy things” asked during the campaign, “like who was Trig’s mom.  And well [Palin raises her hand], I’m Trig’s mom.  And do you wanna see my medical records to prove that?  And days would go by before the mainstream media would even try and correct that, that, yeah, OK, it’s proven that she factually is Trig’s mom.” 

Is it?

Palin’s entered a significant realm of dissembling.  Palin hasn’t released her medical records, and that’s a very interesting mistatement for someone who wants to be president in 2012.  Whose hard-earned Republican political career will next go down in flames next by riding roughshod with Alaska’s maverick governor?  Arkansas Former Governor Mike Huckabee’s? Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s?  Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s?  Massachusetts Former Governor Mitt Romney’s?  Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s?    South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s?

“And do you wanna see my medical records to prove that I’m Trig’s mom?”  Palin jeers.

Governor Palin, as a matter of fact, we do.  Send them in soon. 

by Sarah Whalen, a free-lance writer and contributor to Bayoubuzz.