Gloucester High School, site of the 17 High School girls who got pregnant this past summer, voted to make contraceptives available (with parental consent) at the high school health center last night.
Good move, Gloucester. Now while it's unclear that these young women would have been impacted by this change in policy (remember, it's alleged that at least half of them wanted to get pregnant) this will be a great service to the rest of the teens at this high school.
Want more about this story? Read Courtney's op-ed about the missing pieces in the original Gloucester coverage, Vanessa's take down of girl shaming and Jessica talking about giving credit to Crisis Pregnancy Centers.
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How many kids will be using those resources though, if they need parental permission first? I wouldn't have in high school.
GOOD. There's been rumors that Jamie Lynn Spears (Britney's 17 yrs old sister) might be pregnant again and once again, the media is mocking her, when really, it's our own damn faults for not educating teens about safe sex.
Parental consent is a pile of horseshit. Does a Christian Science kid need parental consent for antibiotics? (The answer had better be no.) And yes, contraceptives are as necessary as antibiotics, without them people just screw anyway, and then we'll live in Ceacescu's Romania. Infanticide, abandonment, and neglect - the pro-life trifecta!
I can't quite agree w/ you, Brown Trash Punk. It's not like music and television cloak the method in which babies are made -- it's an endless source of pop-culture drama. Never mind the vast sources of good info online. Some kids are simply foolhardy, and all the education in the world won't help them.
I knew girls in high school who got knocked up twice! I mean, what kind of moron wouldn't have gotten the memo after the first child? I'm all for excusing true ignorance due to poor upbringing or being born into a less fortunate demographic. But if you get pregnant and then don't go out of your way to figure out how it happened and how to prevent it, then you've crossed into "willfully ignorant" territory and should be regarded with some level of contempt (or pity). Personal responsibility should kick in at some point.
I'm all for disseminating sex education far and wide, Conservative Right be damned. Air drop propaganda leaflets and condoms over schools, like during the war, if need be. However, have no illusions that kids will cease to do self-destructive things, including the monumental screw-up of getting pregnant while still in high school.
I must agree that the parental permission thing pretty much blows this initiative out of the water. Lame, lame compromise. *sigh*
If we lived in a world where children gave their parents fair warning when they were planning to have sex, we probably wouldn't have all the teen pregnancies we have now.
Requiring that teenagers get parental consent is just a stupid way for the school administrators to walk the fence.
On the one hand, those parents who still want their children to believe that babies are delivered by a stork delivery service can pretend that vows of chastity are more effective than latex and spermicide.
And parents who don't want to become grandparents too soon can still pretend that they are giving their children the resources to be sexually responsible while maintaining the illusion that they know what their kids are up to.
This way, EVERBODY WINS! ***rolls eyes***
Oh geez,
Seems like the if parental consent is needed, those that probably need free contraceptives the most are the ones that are going to miss out.
Is access to contaceptives a privelage or a right?