eople decisively favor letting their public schools provide birth control to students, but they also voice misgivings that divide them along generational, income and racial lines, a poll showed.
Sixty-seven percent support giving contraceptives to students, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll. About as many ”” 62% ”” said they believe providing birth control reduces the number of teenage pregnancies.
“Kids are kids,” said Danielle Kessenger, 39, a mother of three young children from Jacksonville, Fla., who supports providing contraceptives to those who request them. “I was a teenager once and parents don’t know everything, though we think we do.”
Yet most who support schools distributing contraceptives prefer that they go to children whose parents have consented. People are also closely divided over whether sex education and birth control are more effective than stressing morality and abstinence, and whether giving contraceptives to teenagers encourages them to have sexual intercourse.
As the school become wrap-around social serevice providers, they become the equivalent of small states because they are state supported and have state-like control over the children.
Because of this, we can see that if the schools are supported in giving out contraceptives without parental notification, on the grounds that it is good for both the child and the state ( for prevention lowers costs), then they will have the power to pursue abortions for pregnant children for the same reasons. This is inevitable, because the parents will aliinated their own perogatives in order to avoid the responsibility of making such decisions. The state-in-a-state will then pick up the decision because they have the authority to do so. Such is the power of a wraparound social service provider.
I do not see how anyone can do anything except despair of such a society when parents forego their responsibilities with such abandon. The erosion of the family is irreversible, it would seem, and there is precious little any church can do about it. LM
People decisively favor letting their public schools provide birth control to students, but they also voice misgivings that divide them along generational, income and racial lines, a poll showed.
Terry Mattingly would say there’s a “religion ghost” in this story. Somehow I bet that there was not ONLY a divide along generational, income and racial lines. I’m betting there was also a divide along faith lines as well: Most evangelicals, Catholics, and other orthodox Christians would not support providing birth control in schools!
And now leaving religion and morality out of the question entirely, as someone with a degree in Public Health, I’m shocked that schools and or parents would consider handing out the Pill to such young girls. The pill has serious and potentially long-term side-effects. It’s not something to be treated lightly. Due to a medical condition (hormonal problem) I had to take a low-estrogen version of the Pill from about age 17 – 25. My parents and I really agonized over the decision, even though I had low risk factors (low blood pressure, never smoked). But there is a history of heart disease and cancer in my family, so taking the Pill was not something to do lightly.
Sometimes I really despair over our society.
Soooo, by providing the pill, our schools are openly admittig to our children that the adults-in-charge know that the children are having sex.
In the mind of a juvenile, this can send the message that the adults-in-charge think its OK for the juveniles to have sex.
Now, if a juvenile becomes a regular practicioner of sex, how do we expect that juvenile, with her immature and not fully develope4d juvenile mind, to not suffer maturational development problems associated with her sexual activities?
Will this permissive attitude toward juvenile sexuality result in adult pathologies/personality disorders related to early sexual activity?
And, for those of us who have a Judeo-Christian ‘sense’ of sin and morality, what about this persmissive attitude towards sin exhibited by the adults-in-charge of our children and grand children?
If were younger and had school age children, I would think seriously about home schooling or searching for/moving to live near a Christian school.
Does anyone know for what age the FDA has approved the use of the pill. Has it been approved for 16 year olds….how about 12 or 14?
The day my school district starts handing out the Pill is the first day my children are going to be homeschooled.
I did not rut like the beasts when I was in school. I knew of no one else in my class that did either. Why should we now assume that children rut like beasts? Where do schools now fail where they were once successful?
So basically, 70% of respondents would oppose the Maine school plan, which does not require parental consent to dispense birth control measures. I wonder how many of the 37% would actually check the “yes” box on the clinic form asking for prior consent to distribute birth control to their son or daughter. When actually faced with this situation as opposed to a hypothetical in a poll question, I would imagine most parents would not give their consent.
[blockquote}”I was a teenager once and parents don’t know everything, though we think we do.”[/blockquote]
Spoken like a true teenager. I cannot imagine a more tepid or vapid expression to abdicate one’s role as a parent. By her own logic, she has no idea what she’s talking about, and thus should be roundly ignored.
I cannot despair of Society, for I had no faith in it to begin with.
“Most ok birth control for schools”- I’m overjoyed to see that public schools will not be reproducing themselves.
I have it on good authority kids drink and do drugs, too. “Kids are kids,” right? So, let’s hand out fifths of bourbon as they leave school for the day. On second thought, maybe the teachers can blend up some pina coladas instead, because the taste will be a lot more easy to take. After all, these are kids.
#7. Steven in Falls Church,
The Maine plan doesn’t allow kids to participate in the school’s health clinic without their parent’s permission. Parents who don’t want their children to have access to birth control through the clinic can decline to sign consent forms for the child to be treated at the clinic.
Steven was right to note:
[blockquote] The 67% in the AP poll who favor providing birth control to students include 37% who would limit it to those whose parents have consented, and 30% to all who ask.
[/blockquote]
The headline twists the poll’s conclusion. Perhaps the 37% who would limit it to those having parental consent have figured out the personal monetary savings involved in getting the public school system to cover what would ordinarily be the costs of a doctor’s visit, the cost of the Rx, the time involved in taking the kid to the doctor, the time out of school, the time lost from work etc.
The most interesting part is the percentage of responders who are actually parents of school-aged children:
37%.
So, the majority of those who approve of this don’t have kids to begin with.
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/ap-vast-majority-want-schools-to-give-birth-control
I have 2 daughters and it is the job of my wife and I to raise them. It is none of the schools G—D—business to interfere and become a facilitator of sin in their lives if they are tempted in the direction a boyfriend may be pushing them. By giving out condoms, etc.–especially while skulking behind parents’ backs– completely undermines a parents’ authority and teaching. I can’t help it if a majority of negligent parents want to help their daughters to be (let us be honest) whores who will bounce from boy to boy if they become sexually active at age 11.
It is these same public schools which bar anything religious–but which feel no compunction at all at trashing the moral views of religious parents. The hypocrisy and fraud of it all is mind boggling. But it does not bother the ethicless, valueless parents and school officials who are willing to morally rape their own daughters.
#11: YOu are partly missing the point. What ousay is true enough, but the parents of those who do not want their kids in the clinic know perfectly well that contraceptives handed out by the clinics – condoms and pills – will get spread among the rest of the kids without regard for right and wrong, permission or no permission slips. These ARE children, after all and theywill do what little kids always do.
Second those who do sign the slips are in fact creating an atmophere in the school which the clinic itself is also fostering, and this will put those kids and parents “on the ourside,” among the uncool.
Third, the kids are by law under age for sex (by Maine law), and the school is not reporting them as it is required to do, and you may be sure the kids know this. Indeed, the school nurse is the wife of the attorney general in Maine. Do you wonder that there has been no action by the attorney general’s office? And both parents and kids know this too.
So you remark is technically correct, but it does not deal with the really real realilty of what happens in a middle school. Larry
#13 I like the numbers you quote. This birth control business sounds like more nails being pounded in the casket labeled sin as it closes up the being called family.