It's ridiculous to prescribe birth control products to middle-schoolers against their parents' wishes, but what's particularly absurd is the proposed standard that's being used to justify the policy:
Committee members Rebecca Minnick and Susan Hopkins said they probably wouldn't vote to reduce the scope of reproductive health services provided at King. Other committee members couldn't be reached for comment Monday."If it saves one girl from getting pregnant too soon, it's worth it," Minnick said.
If that's the standard, then why not just put all the girls in chastity belts? Why not teach the kids about morality and what the Bible has to say about sex outside of marriage? If it saves just one girl.... you can justify almost anything!
When you have sex, you should get pregnant. If that means a thirteen-year-old gets pregnant, that is not as horrible as kids learning that their school administration will act as an accomplice if they want to have sex (how do kids that young know what they want and how can they understand the consequences?) The school's job is to teach kids math and reading and history, not to provide contraceptives. There are so many levels of wrong about this.
mpayne: Interesting take on it. I certainly agree insofar as "saving one girl from pregnancy" can't be used to justify much in my mind.
I'm a fan of technology overcoming the default state of nature, so I disagree with the statement "if you have sex you should get pregnant". If I go out in the rain, thanks to materials like gortex, and umbrellas and so on, I don't need to get wet. If I fall off my bicycle, I don't need to be concussed because I can wear a helmet. And so on.
Having contraceptives does not lead to having sex, as anybody who's had to throw out an expired condom can confirm. And not having contraceptives, statistics ably demonstrate, does not lead to not having sex.
If you believe that on moral grounds a sexually active teenager should be at risk of pregnancy, are you considering the fate of the baby? Is it fair to burden more children with teenage parents? Perhaps the morality of "saving one baby from having a teenage mother" is more palatable than "saving one girl from pregnancy".
Ideally, all sex should be open to the possibility of life. Granted, not everyone agrees, but it is not a school's place to be complicit in inconsequential sex.
I have had friends have babies at 12, 13, 15, and 16, and none of those babies have any lack of love. Yes, it makes things more difficult, but having children changes people, strengthens and matures them. Mothers are resilient, they are able to work and go to school. Pregnancy is not a tragedy - having children is a gift. Teenage moms eventually become non-teenage moms, and having a young mother is not something kids need to be saved from.
Strictly speaking, having contraceptives does not lead to having sex, but thinking back to junior high, we were confused - a couple of us ventured into sex, got pregnant, and the rest of us had some sense, gleaned from the adults around us, that we should not have sex; for one, because there is the possibility of pregnancy, but also because it's meant for relationships that take much more time and thought to develop that anything we could have had by that age. If teachers turn and instead say sex is normal, here's some birth control, I can see kids erring more on the wrong side of that confusion.
Well that's a false dichotomy. It's possible to make contraceptives available without encouraging their use. At my school, we were talked to quite openly about contraception without any kind of expectation or encouragement to use it yet. They said when you have sex, whenever that is, here's some stuff to think about. It's just preparation. Contraception shouldn't be a mystery, and honestly I don't think just saying "use a condom" is enough: in the battle situation it's dark, you're nervous, needless to say in a heightened emotional state. Some prior thought and preparation is sensible.
That can be guided when you're a young teenager without encouraging younger sex.
mpayne: I agree.
jez: What you're saying could happen, but it doesn't. American public school officials are woefully incompetent (in general) and shouldn't be entrusted with that responsibility. Many parents aren't much better though, I guess. Eh.
It happened for me. I went to a good school, but a huge slab of that kind of thing was provided externally by some local government body I think (I wasn't paying attention to the politics of it at the time!) so it would have been the same whatever school I was at.
Why are your school officals so bad? Would they improve if you paid them more?
jez: They're already overpaid. They would probably improve if they were subjected to competitive market forces like the rest of us.
If preventing pregnancy for kids having sex becomes a school's task, if it doesn't work and a girl becomes pregnant, are they then obligated to provide an abortion?
Of course not.
It's the school's job to teach you how to count change, but if you get ripped off down the market the school won't reimburse you.
Besides which, schools never provide personal medical procedures. They might be where you get immunisation jabs and checked for nits, but you won't get your verrucas seen to or your tonsils out there.
Morally speaking, providing contraception does not make you an accomplice. This isn't some abstract theoretical concept I've come up with, I'm reporting from experience. You've bundled the idea up with school officials saying "sex is normal" (your words... and of course sex IS normal, but I know what you mean) and giving kids their blessing and encouragement to go fornicate. You, and more importantly school officials, should try not to do that.
What's your take on selling guns? Your argument from contraception parallels the idea that a gun seller is complicit in gun-crime.
Guns should not be sold to middle schoolers.
What people with more sound senses of right and wrong (adults, in a crude approximation) buy with their own money is not my business. When an adult has made up his/her mind that they would like to have sex and to then buy contraceptives, that is not my business; likewise, adult gun buyers are entrusted by gunsellers and the public with knowing when it is right or wrong to fire.
Giving a free pass for inconsequential sex or for owning a gun to people who are too young to know what to do with it is a mistake and it hurts young people. They should still be getting guidance on right and wrong, not assistance in satisfying any whim or curiosity.
Of course, there will be violations of morality even among adults - people who have abortions to get out of pregnancy, or people who fire guns for the wrong reasons, but providing people with a sound moral base during their development is the best way to create responsible, morally strong, free people.
You're right but you can do both.
And the main reason for giving condoms to younger teenagers is not so that they can use them, but so they can get used to having them. This is a subject around which there is much anxiety, and the more natural it is to have them the more likely it is to use them.
Again, consider the likely conditions at the first battle situation. This is not a drill! The fewer obstacles there are to using protection the better.
And protected sex is more preferable to unprotected sex. That's not even a moral question, that's a factual statement on the basis of reducing unwanted pregnancy and the spread of STDs. Maybe the best alternative is to wait until you can comfortably have a child before having sex, but it is not a requirement for citizens of America to agree with that opinion.
There's no such thing as a free pass to inconsequential sex. Condoms are good, but their not 100% effective, especially against certain STDs; and there isn't a sheath in the world that can protect against a broken heart.
jez: I agree with what you said, but I think that parents should make the decision about what their kids learn and when. If everyone agreed, then sure, have the schools teach it. But everyone doesn't agree, and the government shouldn't get to pick a winner.
Michael: I think you've identified the central conflict around this issue, which is the boundaries of parents' control. It could be argued that there's a question of herd immunity with regard to STDs, which is an area where sometimes parents do / should not not have the kind of control you speak of.
I think for reasons of public health we should hopefully agree that safe sexual practices are part of the vital equipment that every adult needs to know about.
The kind of education I'm advocating is most likely to put kids off sex more than anything. I remember seeing some very unpleasant slides.
jez: Government shouldn't pick economic winners, and it certainly shouldn't pick moral winners. Herd immunity to STDs is very different than, say, for TB. It's very easy to ensure that my chance of getting HIV is less than that of e.g. getting hit by a meteor.
Actually, that's not true. It might be exceedingly rare for HIV transmission via blood transfusion to happen in the West, but that's not because it's easy (or cheap) to arrange. Good luck if you need a transfusion in Kenya, for example.
And that's just talking about HIV, which is notoriously difficult to catch.
I'm not sure how moral it is to have such a casual attitude towards other people getting AIDS. Do they deserve it? Is it a fitting punishment for the crime?
The most ethical thing, imo, is to provide and advocate every defense against its spread. Including abstinence, and also including barriers.
It's not about picking moral winners. How is a couple practicing safe sex winning against a couple who is waiting?