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by Jane Jimenez |
November 8th, 2007
If you want to ensure failure, just give a pack of birth control pills or a patch to an eleven-year-old.
If you’ve read the news, and if you’re not banging your head against the wall, you must be pulling out hairs . . . or at least scratching the scalp raw. What were they thinking of?
Wednesday night, October 17, grown adults on the Portland School Committee in Maine voted to extend approval of condoms for junior high students to a wider approval of the full range of birth control options. School-based health clinics will now be in the business of dispensing birth control to students ages 11 to 13 . . . confidentially . . . without informing their parents.
This decision shows the muddled thinking of adults who, while loving children, have lost track of the best interests of children. Richard Verrier, who supported the vote for birth control, told the Associated Press, “it’s not enough to depend on parents to protect their children because there may be students who can’t discuss things with their parents.”
Well, Mr. Verrier, it’s too bad the Portland School Committee failed to act as “caring parents” to “protect their children.” Any loving parent will know that a child 11 to 13 is not old enough to engage in sexual activity of any kind. A loving parent protecting their child would take every possible step to teach, counsel, mentor and direct their child away from sexual activity.
Instead, Portland School Committee members acted as rebuffed taxpayers who do not want to spend dollars on rearing babies born to children. Even when the district provided condoms at their clinics they reported that 17 middle school students had become pregnant in the last four years, seven of them in the 2006-7 school year.
Responding to teen sex as a teen pregnancy issue, their emphasis on birth control tells students that having sex is not the problem. Having babies is what the adults who “care about them” object to.
One must wonder at the factual information the Committee relied on to make their decision. Firstly, teen sex is not just a problem when it creates babies.
Valerie Huber, Executive Director of the National Abstinence Education Association, points out the obvious. “Whenever an 11-year-old is having sex, there is a problem much bigger than whether or not she will become pregnant because a child that young who has the opportunity to have sex – let alone feels she is mature enough to deal with the physical and emotional effects of intercourse – is, in most cases, seeking intimacy and approval because it is void on all other levels in her life.”
This search for love is what leads to teen pregnancy. Engaging in the lives of teens, demonstrating true affection and love for their welfare, is a costly investment. But it is what prevents teen pregnancy. Instead of providing what teens really need, the Committee opted to throw pills and condoms at them.
They will be disappointed. They will continue to witness teen births. Given typical use, the overall failure rate for condoms in preventing pregnancy is approximately 15%. For teens, this failure rate increases to 22%. When you promote condoms to teens, you are promoting a 22% failure rate.
Likewise, chemical birth control has its own failure rates. Dr. Patricia Sulak, a leading researcher of birth control, makes it a practice to ask her adult audiences to raise their hands if they or someone they know became pregnant while using the birth control pill. With regularity, the room is filled with hands waving in the air.
Evaluating contraception failure rates for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), the Committee has now become a key causative factor in this epidemic. Condoms, despite regular media hype, fail to prevent serious STD infections, including incurable genital herpes. One in five people over the age of 12 now have genital herpes and carry the virus on body areas not covered by the condom. Talk about failure!
And if you want to ensure failure, just give a pack of birth control pills or a patch to an eleven-year-old. Reassured by adults she trusts that she is “protected” against pregnancy, what chance is there that she will also use condoms? Chemical contraception offers absolutely NO protection against STDs. Automatic failure!
Committee members will find themselves regretting their actions, even if it takes several years for them to see their error. Not so for the teens who accept the Committee “solutions” for teen pregnancy.
These teens will begin reaping the “rewards” of failure right away. They will experience the failures of the solutions promoted by adults who wanted a quick fix at the expense of teens who will be left to deal with the here and now failures of the quick fix.
Contraception will fail to safeguard our children. And by leading our children to contraception, the Committee has failed our children. A double dose of failure . . . and we will all pay the final price.
jvjimenez@msn.com
Visit their website at: http://www.fromthehomefront.org/
Responses to "Failure Is Assigned to Maine Students"
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I agree with your reasoning. When I heard about this, another aspect came to mind, and that is the health of these children.
Does a 11-13 year old really know their entire health history? Do they know what medical problems run in their family? Does the school nurse take the time to explain the risks involved in taking birth control pills?
I fail to see the logic where a child can get birth control pills without parental consent, but cannot get an asprin without it.
Comment by Rev.Jeanene | November 8, 2007
This is just more example of the left trying to become parent. As soon as the parents get over this outrage the next step will be to have all of the kids play act like muslims. Oh thats right that was done already in California. Or maybe they will stop having a boys bathroom and a girls bathroom on school grounds. Thats right, that has been done already as well. How about taking all references to mother and father away. It's been done. How about telling all white students they are racist, thats been done as well. I could go on but the point is clear. As test scores go down in flames and teen pregnancies go up our kids "feel" better.
Can you spell home school. Not if you went to public school.
Comment by fbaginski | November 8, 2007
I'll tell you, having grown up in Maine and now living in South Portland, the mindset of our southern communities are shocking. Socially, southern Maine has become so wrapped up in liberal psycho-babble, parents are more concerned with being their child's best friend than in being their parent. Gone are the days when a pregnant teen would be sent to live with an aunt in east dish somewhere out of embaressment.. gone are the days when being discreet was a virtue and sexuality was left at home. Sure, in the modern era these things seem archaic, but in retrospect these societal expectations kept our state grounded and moral. There were repercussions.. now that liberalism has infected us, everything is acceptable, and anything goes, and the bar continues to drop.
Today's headline showed 50% of a Maine school marching in protest behind a diversity flag (removed by the principal in policy).. Had the American flag blown away from the front of the school throughout the night, I'll bet you not one student would have noticed, much less reported it missing. So much garbage is being fed to these children.. Is it any surprise teenage boys are plucking their eyebrows in the mirror and teenage girls are shaving their heads and piercing their nipples? Gender and any sense of natural sexuality were stripped from these kids long before they had a chance. I feel like I'm living in little San Francisco.
Comment by strandg | November 9, 2007
The mistake is ignoring the REALITY that kids may, or can 'do sex' in spite of their parents - at any age past puberty, 11 or otherwise.
It's all well and good to insist they do not - but the world has never been a 'wish it were so' or 'insist it be so'. Some parents DON'T do a proper job of guiding their kids. That's reality.
And proper responsibility is acknowledging and dealing with reality. You ignore reality at your peril - as the present administration is learning at the expense of all conservatives.
Comment by gnarlyerik | November 9, 2007
gnarlyerik,
Let's start with the rather generous assumption that liberal parenting ideology actually wants to discourage sexual activity in kids. It's a stretch, but lets grant them that.
Now, let's propose an overly simplistic but nonetheless useful model:
Behavior = Rewards/Consequeces
As we make the numerator larger and hold the denominator constant, behavior increases. As we hold the numerator constant and shrink the denominator, behavior increases.
So what do expect when we make the numerator bigger and simultaneously shrink the denominator?
We surround kids with sexual innuendo and glorification in every conceivable medium, from the toys they buy to the programs they watch to the magazines they leaf through to the music they listen to. We teach them how to have safe sex and throw in some obligatory words about how they really should wait, all well teaching them how not to wait.
Then, we shrink the consequences. Pregnant? No prob. Just step this way to my vaccuum machine. Want to fool around? Here, allow me to assist with this dispenser of free condoms and/or birth control pills. Mom and dad a problem? No sweat. This will just be between us, but don't go to Cartoon Network and try to create a username or password - you'll need your parents' permission for that.
And then we react with puzzlement and consternation when the sexual activity of children goes up, increasing our feverish efforts to further reduce the denominator.
This isn't rocket science.
Comment by Steve Sabin | November 10, 2007