Kathleen Parker reveals that the left’s opposition to Sarah Palin revolves around one issue: abortion.

Palin is everything liberals have always purported to want for women — freedom to choose, opportunities for both career and family, a shot at the top ranks of American political life. With five children and an impressive resumé, Palin should be Miss July in the go-girl calendar.

There’s just one hitch: She doesn’t believe in abortion except to save a mother’s life. That’s hardcore, even for pro-life Republicans, most of whom allow for abortion in cases of rape and incest. […]

While we’re exhausting irony, Palin would have been excoriated as a hypocrite had she or her daughter had an abortion. That would have been legitimate and, probably, deal-breaking criticism. By choosing life, the Palins acted in accordance with their public positions — and were ridiculed for their honesty.

I would add it is easy to imagine that, had the young lady decided to have an abortion, the left would have celebrated her “choice” right after running her mother out of town on the hypocrisy rail. Sarah Palin is a bit to the right of me on the issue, but I admire her for having the courage to stick by her convictions, no matter the circumstances.

Along the same lines, here’s a piece excoriating the press on its predation of a 17-year-old:

This shameful but predictable media performance stands in marked contrast to the rigorous “hands-off” privacy policy dutifully honored by the press throughout the Clinton years for the president’s then-teenage daughter, Chelsea. Indeed earlier this year, though Miss Clinton was now well into her twenties and an impressively poised surrogate for her mother’s campaign, NBC News suspended reporter David Shuster for asserting that Sen. Clinton’s campaign was “pimping” her daughter — a classless formulation, to be sure. But where’s the hyper-sensitivity about a candidate’s child now?

When Al Gore’s son was arrested on narcotics and speeding charges in 2007, moreover, the national press was a model of sympathetic restraint. The muted coverage was devoid of calls for a national “teaching moment” on drug abuse or responsible driving. The message was plain and correct: No news here, move along.

The Republican base and other people of good will are angry over this grotesque display. It is obvious what the media and Democrats are up to here. They want to define Sarah Palin as a failure before she even has a chance to succeed. Hence the speculation that McCain will dump her from the ticket. How absurd. All we know about Palin’s performance as a candidate so far is that she gave polished performances at her unveiling in Ohio and at a rally the next day in Pennsylvania. The supposed embarrassments — about her alleged membership in the fringe Alaskan Independence Party and her woefully incomplete vetting — are concoctions of a media stumbling over itself to prove a conclusion it has already reached.

So far, it is the press that has embarrassed itself, not the governor from Alaska.