Weigel's Quote From The Doctor

Many readers have pointed out that the citation Dave used from the two page fax issued hours before polls opened on election day 2008 was inaccurate. Dave cited this:

From the letter: "Routine prenatal testing early in the second trimester  [of Palin's pregnancy] determined that the fetus had the chromosomal condition known as Down Syndrome. [The Alaska governor and her husband, Todd, decided to go ahead with the pregnancy.]"

Dave added the words in bold. They do not exist in the original (PDF). I'm sorry I didn't catch it. If Dave were merely trying to explain the context, he should have put his own words in parentheses. I apologize for this. Another reader suggests that Palin was in "prodromal labor" and the contractions were of no great consequence:

There are several phases of labor. Not all labor is active labor, and not even all active labor is particularly painful. The cervix can be dilating and effacing and there can be no pain, just pressure or no feeling at all. It's called prodormal labor. It involves contractions and can last for days.

I was in prodormal labor for 22 hrs after my water broke. It is not rare. Would I have gotten on a plane during those 22hrs? No way. I would not have even gone to places with many people for fear of infection. I stayed home. Was she stupid and irresponsible to get on a plane after she had a leak of amniotic fluid, sure. Does this prove she was lying? No.

But prodormal labor occurs before the water breaks. And Palin described the contractions she felt at 4 am in Going Rogue as something new that were not the same as her previous Braxton Hicks contractions. For the record, the Dish consulted several of the top obstetricians in the country while researching this almost two years ago. While none would specifically comment on an individual case without examining the record and all said Palin's account was conceivably true, they uniformly found the story as something extraordinary and profoundly implausible as stated.

Surely that alone is worth exploring. But no reporter in the national media has ever asked Palin to account for the whole story and explain it. The story was in her book, and no interviewer, including Oprah, went near it. Why?

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan