Letters to the Editor
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Why not incentivize teen pregnancy?
It already is incentivized, and feminists would like to incentivize it further. Welcome to the feminist paradise.
Oh, and teen fathers have zero rights already, coupled with crushing obligations. Sorry, sisters - it will be hard to punish them beyond what they already experience.
Maybe they can just be sent away, so the state can provide for these young moms completely. Sounds like a plan well along already.
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huh?
Lemme get this straight:
-abstinence-only education in schools (until 2008)
-the right to turn away birth control and morning after pill RX's at pharmacy
-parental consent, or the consent of the baby daddy, plus all kinds of other red tape, before getting a first-trimester abortion (until the loop-holes are closed and Roe v Wade is finally overturned)
-cutting access to welfare (because all those fat-cat welfare queen moms should be working!)
-refusing to insure children of all but the poorest parents
and now:
-expulsion from school, which means goodbye to any chance of getting a job that pays better than share-cropping
Exactly where is the "pro-life" stance in any of this? And where is the "Christian value" in this either?
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Aren't there already diversion programs for this
W/o having to shoehorn 'mainstreaming' down on everyone?
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re: huh?
Juliebird,
Lemme get this straight:
-abstinence-only education in schools (until 2008)
-the right to turn away birth control and morning after pill RX's at pharmacy
-parental consent, or the consent of the baby daddy, plus all kinds of other red tape, before getting a first-trimester abortion (until the loop-holes are closed and Roe v Wade is finally overturned)
-cutting access to welfare (because all those fat-cat welfare queen moms should be working!)
-refusing to insure children of all but the poorest parents
and now:
-expulsion from school, which means goodbye to any chance of getting a job that pays better than share-cropping
Exactly where is the "pro-life" stance in any of this? And where is the "Christian value" in this either?"
The Christian value is that it doesn't pay to have sex and have children out of wedlock. I would have thought that was obvious.
As for the pro-life stance, ensuring children are born and well cared for would mean putting them into a position where they either support the child themselves or put it up for adoption. That's what I am seeing.
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Um ok
"The Christian value is that it doesn't pay to have sex and have children out of wedlock. I would have thought that was obvious."
Gosh, I missed the part of the Bible where Jesus said that it doesn't pay to have children out of wedlock. I think I did read, though, where Jesus said that Mary Magdalene should definitely have to leave her newborn baby at home and sit on her stiches (thanks for the phrase :)) in algebra. He also told the disciples to shame her I think. Yes, yes, I definitely remember Jesus saying to shame people. Stone them maybe.
As for the story, good for the school. I hope we can have educated mothers raising their kids to, you know, read.
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Conundrum
I don't have a good answer for the larger problem here (children having babies), except for the tired answer that we need much more sex education, starting much earlier (maybe third grade or so) and which is much more blunt about consequences, birth control, etc.
This is yet another example of The Hilarious Law of Unintended Results. We as a society decided that we'd treat pregnant teens "compassionately", let them stay in school, give them welfare and ADC benefits .... and the result has been an EXPLOSION (over several decades) in the number of teens getting pregnant and keeping their babies, and a sea change in our culture, where having a baby "out of wedlock" went from being shameful to where it is happy, prideful and normative (despite the apalling result of poverty, fatherless kids, etc.).
Now we are stuck, because I don't think there is any practical way to go back to making it shameful (and I am not sure I'd want that) and at the same time teaching girls what a lifelong disaster it is to have a baby when you are not grown up yourself. Unfortunately, any talk about how truly bad this kind of life is, seems to end up offending any single moms or families that were started this way. I don't know a way around that.
What I do know is that my local high school has so many pregnant girls that driving by at lunch time, even a casual observer would be inclined to think they were seeing a gigantic Lamaze class on break and not teenage students. (Even the MIDDLE SCHOOL has a shocking number of pregnant girls.) And I mean the visibly pregnant, of course -- there are probably a lot of girls in very early pregnancy who aren't showing yet.
The old, old philosophy was to separate pregnant teens from the school population, so that they didn't "corrupt" the other, innocent girls (notice nothing applied to BOYS) with their sexuality and lack of morals. Even if this was a desirable thing to do, I don't see how it could be done anymore: too many girls are pregnant and there is no money to build all the schools it would take to educate them separately.
If there should be "consequences" for a pregnant teenage GIRL, what about the boys? We don't talk about how many boys impregnate girls, never even think about condoms (or use them wrong) and they often father more than one child before they are 20 by different girls. They have no sense of consequences, because there ARE none -- they don't have to pay child support (as they are minors and jobless) and most are not involved in their children's lives (@Anonymous: this is because they don't give a crap, not because the mothers don't want them in the children's lives.) We have, perhaps inadvertantly and with good intentions, made it incredibly easy for a young man to engage in this behavior, and instead of any kind of repercussions, he is likely to get "high fived" and congratulated on his prowess.
I have a daughter-in-law who had two pregnancies as a teen. One thing often overlooked is that when you are warm and welcoming about a first "mistake", the teen often thinks "nothing wrong with this" and does it AGAIN. She had two babies within two years.
Ms. Price sarcastically talks about "how it isn't easier" to go through a pregnancy, childbirth, etc. than it is to be in class a day after giving birth. I agree, that's a ridiculous demand and a teen mom needs just as much recovery time as an adult woman. HOWEVER, I think we need to acknowledge that in many ways, having a baby IS easier than choosing birth control -- making Doctor's appointments, coughing up your spending money for something squicky and unromantic, being disciplined and actually USING it -- and continuing a pregnancy "just happens", where an abortion costs upfront cash and has to be planned and arranged. For many people, "just letting things happen" IS actually easier....they lack the capacity to look a few months or years in the future and see the pain of childbirth or the difficulty of raising a child (or children) in extreme poverty. All they can deal with is the "now", and in the "now", yes...continuing a pregnancy involved no difficult choice, no decision, no discipline.