THE US Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin yesterday revealed her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, in an announcement intended to knock down rumours by liberal bloggers that Mrs Palin faked a pregnancy of her own to cover up for her child.
Bristol Palin, one of Mrs Palin's five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant. She will keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John M
cCain.
The disclosure of the pregnancy came on the opening day of the Republican National Convention, scaled back because of Hurricane Gustav, and three days after Mr McCain named Mrs Palin as his running mate.
Mrs Palin was selected by Mr McCain to help him shore up support from the Republican Party's religious right. Mrs Palin is firmly in the evangelical Christian camp.
Bristol made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.
"The Palins said in a statement: "Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realise very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family.
"We ask the media respect our daughter and Levi's privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates," the statement concluded, revealing the first name of the father, but not his age.
Senior McCain campaign officials said Mr McCain knew of the pregnancy when he selected Mrs Palin, 44, last week as his running mate.
In the short period since she was announced last Friday, Mrs Palin has helped to energise the Republican Party's conservative base as it campaigns for the 4 November election against Democrat Barack Obama.
McCain officials said the news of the pregnancy was being released to rebut what one aide called "mud-slinging and lies" circulating on liberal blog sites.
According to these rumours, Mrs Palin had faked a pregnancy and pretended to have given birth in May to her fifth child, a son named Trig who has Down's syndrome. The rumour was that Trig was actually Bristol's child.
Some bloggers highlighted the apparent lack of visible signs of pregnancy in photographs of Mrs Palin when she was expecting Trig, while also suggesting that Bristol looked pregnant at that time.
A senior campaign official said the McCain camp was appalled that these rumours had not only been spread around liberal blog sites, but also were the subject of heightened interest from mainstream news media.
The McCain campaign announced the daughter's pregnancy to end the rumours.
"Senator McCain's view is this is a private family matter. As parents, (the Palins] love their daughter unconditionally and are going to support their daughter," said Mr McCain's spokesman, Steve Schmidt. "Life happens," he added.
Prominent religious conservatives, many of whom have been lukewarm towards Mr McCain's candidacy, predicted that Bristol's pregnancy would not diminish conservative Christian enthusiasm over the vice-presidential hopeful.
Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America, said: "It's a matter that should stay in the family and they have to work through it together."
Meanwhile, riot police in St Paul, Minnesota, used pepper spray and smoke bombs against a few hundred protesters at the arena where the Republican Party opened its presidential nominating convention with an appeal for hurricane relief.
A group broke off from a larger, peaceful, march by as many as 10,000 protesters. The smaller group smashed police car windows and a shopfront, and a few threw glass bottles at police.
Earlier, the demonstrators marched from the Minnesota state capital to the heavily barricaded Xcel Center, where Mr McCain will accept the Republican presidential nomination later this week. They chanted anti-war slogans and waved signs criticising the president, George Bush.
Seven arrests were reported.
