Friday, June 20, 2008

"Access" answer to everything?

Massachusetts High School Faces Pregnancy Boom

A Massachusetts high school is facing a pregnancy boom with 17 girls entering summer vacation expecting babies in what some have called a pregnancy pact. ....

Officials said that beginning last fall a large group of girls started asking the school clinic for pregnancy tests, the site said.

"Some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," principal Joseph Sullivan told Time.com.

The pregnancy rate ... is four times higher than the previous year, and officials were shocked to learn that men in their 20s had fathered some of the babies, Time.com said.

"We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy," Sullivan told Time.com.


Okay, the problem:

1. Teenage girls getting together and deciding that they want to have babies.

2. Adult males taking advantage of this easy sex from girls too young to have a grasp of what they're doing.

Now, how do you think the school is responding?

A. Getting mental health counselling for teen girls, to address why they would seek early pregnancy.

B. Increased reporting of suspected statutory rape to authorities to prevent not just additional pregnancies but additional sexual abuse.

C. Involving the parents.

D. Agitating to throwing confidential birth control at the kids.

If you guessed D, then you've obviously been paying attention. The answer to everything from statutory rape to unrealistic teen expectations is to pass out condoms and birth control pills to kids who aren't even motivated to use them in the first place.

The Gloucester baby boom is forcing this city of 30,000 to grapple with the question of providing easier access to birth control, something this largely Catholic enclave is slow to embrace, the site said.

Nurse practitioner Kim Daly administered 150 pregnancy tests to students by May, prompting her and the clinic's medical director, Dr. Brian Orr, to lobby for the prescription of contraceptives regardless of parental consent.


How is continuing to keep parents in the dark going to stop girls from deliberately getting pregnant to any man willing to pay them a little attention?

These girls want to get pregnant. Increased access to birth control will not address this. But it will fatten the coffers of the Pill-pushers.

Is there anything that these people won't try to turn into an argument for inserting a wedge between vulnerable teenage girls and their parents?

3 comments:

trailer park said...

What's wrong with doing all four? And what makes you think the school hasn't involved the parents or provided counseling? Most schools have counselors available for students.

The article says that some of the students got pregnant on purpose, which means that some of them did not. What is the harm in providing access to birth control for the students who want it? Using birth control makes it pretty hard to get pregnant.

Christina Dunigan said...

And not having sex makes it impossible to get pregnant.

While access to birth control will reduce the odds of any given sexual encounter resulting in a pregnancy, it will also dramatically increase the number of sexual encounters, with a resulting rise in pregnancy. And, by setting in place the idea that sexual intercourse and reproduction are totally unrelated, you also astronomically increase the odds that any resulting pregnancy will end in a trip to the abortion clinic because instead of viewing the pregnancy as a predictable natural outcome of the sexual activite, the person will view the pregnancy as some sort of betrayal.

Sex. It's how babies are made. And to pretend otherwise is hubris.

trailer park said...

But these kids are having sex, and wishing that they weren't won't prevent pregnancy. Providing contraception will.

by setting in place the idea that sexual intercourse and reproduction are totally unrelated

Providing contraception makes it pretty clear that sex and reproduction are related. If sex and reproduction weren't related, there would be no need for contraception.

you also astronomically increase the odds that any resulting pregnancy will end in a trip to the abortion clinic

Interesting theory, but the data does not bear it out. Statistics show that women who do not use contraception are far more likely to have abortions than women who use contraception. The tiny fraction of all women who don't use contraception are responsible for half of all abortions.