<p>“If it is against the law in Maine for children under the age of 14 to engage in sex, then it should be against the law to provide BC.”</p>
<p>Well, let’s apply your reasoning to other situations. If it’s against the law for 14-year-olds to drink in Maine, then it should be against the law to provide medical care when kids get alcohol poisoning. Treating alcohol poisoning just sends the message that it’s OK to drink, because you can keep drinking to excess without terrible consequences like death. The same kids come into the ER with their third, fourth, fifth overdose…why not just let them go into a coma next time? All you’re doing when you provide that treatment is making it safer for kids to break the law.</p>
<p>“But I will challenge you to rethink your opinion on this topic when you are raising children.”</p>
<p>Many devoted parents disagree with you on these issues, including some on this board. Discounting the opinions of younger citizens by implying they just won’t understand why you’re right until they have kids is simply inaccurate (not to mention a sign that your rhetoric can’t stand on its own merits).</p>
<p>I believe that not becoming an unmarried mother at a young age is what is best for all girls and that responsible policy is that which achieves that result. Because girls have sex, BC is that alternative for those girls, especially since it may prevent conception. Abortion also achieves that result, but by definition it occurs post conception.</p>
<p>poetsheart said:</p>
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<p>Valid questions. BC includes the patch, the pill and condoms. According to the statements of the Maine officials, compliance was why the patch was offered once the pill compliance issue was explained to the girl. So, that’s covered. </p>
<p>Also, go listen to the NPR link on one of my earlier posts. The former head of the similar Baltimore program said that he always advised the girls to get their parents involved and that this was usually successful. Seems many parents of young girls who have become sexually active support the efforts to make sure the girl does not get pregnant.</p>
<p>dke said:</p>
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<p>As to medical uncertainty and risk analysis, as pointed out previously, the pill has been available since 1961. There are 45 years of data available. The FDA has approved their use. </p>
<p>And we know the health and other societal risks from teen pregnancy: increased suicide rate, near certain forfeiture of further educational opportunities, poverty and reliance on public assistance, a nearly 25% increased probability that males born to these girls will do time in prison and the fact that girls born to these teenagers will (to a high statistical certainty) themselves have babies as unmarried teenagers.</p>
<p>I’m old enough to remember polio and when it was decided that we would all take the Salk vaccine in the sugar cubes. Was every risk excluded before we did this? NO! But we knew what polio did to people and we took the vaccine. We know what teen pregnancy does to these girls. Whatever is “unknown” about BC pales in comparison to what teen pregnancy does to her.</p>
<p>CC MOMS (and DADS): When my preteen S and your preteen D decide to be sexually active with each other, in spite of you and I telling them that they should choose abstinance, if my S is the only one of the couple who knows to use BC, YOU HAVE NOT DONE YOUR JOB IN PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN!!!</p>
<p>07Dad
A question about the Texas teen birthrates–are all teens included?
Age of marriage is different in different states. I suspect that a lot of those “teen births” in Texas may be to married 18-19yos. Is it possible that this might account for the higher teen birthrate? If so, I don’t believe this has anything to do with sex ed --just a cultural acceptance of younger marriage and childbearing (as opposed to abortion) if a single teenager is pregnant–we’re talking about BIRTHrates, right, not PREGNANCY rates. (BTW, what were the teen birthrates in the 50s–before contraceptives and before sex ed?)</p>
<p>O7Dad, You have no daughters? (I’m beginning to wonder about your personal interest in pre-teen girls).</p>
<p>**atomom **delicately and politely queried:</p>
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<p>My, so much for sophisticated discourse.</p>
<p>Actually, I knew a girl in junior high (in the 1960’s) when I was growing up who drank anti-freeze when she turned up pregnant because of her fear of her intolerant and saintly mother. She probably figured she was better off dead than to cross her mother’s beliefs. Didn’t live to find out. That is the kind of thing that motivates me. </p>
<p>What motivates you? What do you care about?</p>
The best outcome for society is for child rapists to get reported and locked up, and for 11 year-old girls to remain chaste and not be someone’s sex toys. That is why I insist the right treatment is education and reporting, not BC and back to more sex. </p>
<p>By the way, 1of42, you still haven’t answer sjmom’s question: if you have an 11 year-old daughter will you give her BC ? "Daddy, I met this guy Ricky and he’s real cute. And last night Ricky said he won’t be with me anymore unless we show our committment to each other in a bigger way. Dad, can I have the pill ? "</p>
prolongs the problem, then it is NOT the best outcome for society. Giving BC so 11 year-old girls and send them back to their abusers is not the best outcome and prolongs their suffering, mentally and physically.</p>
<p>Eleven year olds don’t need BC, they need parents and adults who have their eyes open and who are willing to take step up to the plate for them. I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and I can tell you that these girls need someone other than their abuser to pay attention to them. BC is not the answer and may only contribute to guilt and self loathing that often go along with childhood sexual abuse. Ever read the stats for suicide rates for survivors of sexual abuse? O7 Dad, if you want to take up a cause, consider preventing suicide by volunteering at a rape crisis center. Victims of childhood sexual abuse are very high on the suicide list too. Be an advocate for prevention of the abuse. Handing out pills and wiping your hands of responsibility is easy.</p>
<p>edvest, I can’t actually remember the last time you tried to make an argument without committing a logical fallacy. Nonetheless, I’ll respond:</p>
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<p>…what I just said is a moral principle. It’s the moral principl that minimizing total suffering is the best thing to do. It doesn’t apply in all cases, but I believe it does in this one.</p>
<p>As for your argument that providing BC prolongs the problem, you’re partially right. It will make a very small number of children decide that having sex is safe, and thus they will do it.</p>
<p>But to assert that that is a worse outcome than not providing BC, ceteris paribus, is something you have yet to do. Clearly not giving kids birth control does not stop them from having sex, so is it your position that the small increase in preteen sex once birth control is introduced is a worse outcome than the much larger increase in preteen pregnancy when birth control is banned? If it is, I submit that you’re being willfully ignorant of reality in favor of your ideological principles.</p>
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<p>Agreed about the child rapists 100%. But honestly, when did ANYONE promote rape here? Where!? It’s actually aggravating how much you think you can misinterpret what we say. If you’re seriously suggesting that anyone here is arguing that child rape is acceptable, I don’t know if it’s actually possible to debate with you.</p>
<p>As for 11 year old girls remaining chaste, I agree that it’s better than having sex. Which is why in an ideal world, they wouldn’t have sex.</p>
<p>But this isn’t an ideal world. You seem to have a problem realizing the fact that even when you educate children, even when you tell them not to have sex, they still do it. At that point, if they’re going to have sex whether you like it or not, the only moral thing to do is to make it as safe as possible. An analogy could be made to lung cancer: do we not treat smokers for lung cancer simply because they (in 99% likelihood) caused it themselves? What about treating car accident victims? Should we not treat them, simply because they went driving?</p>
<p>You’re going to be incapable of debating this seriously until you stop arguing as if we live in some kind of ideal world. Our world sucks in a lot of ways. It’s often very dirty, often very brutal, and a lot of things go on that we’d rather didn’t. Being ideological might seem right to you, but if you’d actually care to take a look at what really goes on, you’d see that your principles cause a lot of suffering. But you don’t take a look at what really goes on, because it would shatter your arguments. Instead, you prefer to continue ignoring reality, and arguing ideals.</p>
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<p>Firstly, that’s an ad hominem question that doesn’t really add anything to the debate, but I’ll answer it nonetheless:</p>
<p>If “Ricky” was a 15 year-old, or something, then I’d be forbidding the relationship, based on what I would assume to be him taking advantage. If “Ricky” was over 18, I’d be calling the cops. I hope you took those previous 2 things for granted, but I never know, so I figured I’d get that out there.</p>
<p>Now, I’d much rather an 11 year-old girl not have sex, so I’d try to counsel my daughter against it, try to stop her from having sex, and so forth. But if all else failed (and sometimes it does), and she was going to have sex whether I liked it or not, I would give her birth control, yes. Not happily, but I would do it.</p>
<p>Now, realistically that isn’t a legitimate situation. Because with most parents, once they know that their child is having sex, they can stop it if they so choose. Much more realistic is that the child is having sex without their parents’ knowledge. If my 11 year-old were having sex and I didn’t know, I’d much, much, MUCH rather that someone be giving her BC and condoms; even though I’d try to stop it if I knew, if I didn’t know about it to be able to stop it, I’d want her to be safe nonetheless.</p>
<p>I’m sure those answers will be too full of relativity and situation-dependence for you, edvest, since you seem to like absolutes so much, but that’s just the way it is.</p>
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<p>Yeah, but what if they girls are having consensual sex? I agree, birth control can’t be used as a way to wipe one’s hands, but saying that childhood sex is always abuse, and that BC is always used to abdicate responsibility of solving the problem, is inaccurate and harmful. As for parents, I think it’s a given that they need that, but I also think that in this debate it was taken as a given the parents were irresponsible or something like that.</p>
<p>11 y/o girls are NOT having consensual sex, 1 of 42. They have NO IDEA what they are doing, they are children and are being manipulated by adults or older boys and they need help. CHILDHOOD SEX IS ALWAYS ABUSE! PERIOD.</p>
<p>Just as you have observed me, allow me to cast some lights on how you think, actually, how you operate: </p>
<p>People like yourself and 07Dad, the world is grey. And it doesn’t bother them that it remains grey - they just muddle along best they could. </p>
<p>There is no absolutes and important decisions are made often based on practicality not principle because well to them…everything is relative, no rights or wrongs. </p>
<p>If you can’t do XXX, you might as well YYYY, they will argue.
Every liberal argument on this thread worked on this credo.</p>
<p>I rather take the road that we ought aspire toward our ideals ( ideologies as 1of42 calls it ). Hence our difference.</p>
<p>07DAD,1of42: You SHOULD listen to Sarahsmom42. She knew what she’s talking about. </p>
<p>Sarahsmom, I am sorry you were a victim of childhood abuse, but I take solace based on what I read from you, that you overcame that tragedy. Many other young girls didn’t. </p>
<p>Also nice of Edvest who made it crystalline clear the difference between liberal and fundamentalist thinking. [ post #210 ].</p>
<p>yourworld,
I wish that I didn’t know about this subject and no one here will ever convince me that just because a child of eleven has her period that she is “ready for sexual activity,” or is equipped to consent to sex.</p>
<p>Histrionics aside, that may be a valid point. But what’s your preferred solution? If an 11 year-old girl is having sex with an 11 year-old boy, are they raping each other or something? Who’s abusing who in that relationship? Are the kids abusing each other?</p>
<p>edvest:</p>
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<p>No. The world is gray. It’s gray for everyone, it’s just that some people choose to ignore it. For example, murder is wrong. Would you agree? Well, what if the murder was that of a terrorist planning to detonate a suicide bomb? Is it still wrong?</p>
<p>If you think there are no shades of gray in this world, you are very blinded.</p>
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<p>There may or may not be absolutes. There are definitely rights and wrongs. If you’d actually read my post, I wrote about an ethical systematic theory in which “right” is what brings the most good to the most people. It’s called utilitarianism. There’s also Kantian deontology, and so forth. You can’t use any one theory exclusively, in general.</p>
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<p>Yes. We should aspire to our ideologies. Absolutely. We should aspire to a world in which no young girls have sex. We should aspire to rid the world of suffering, and so forth. I do aspire to those things. I absolutely do. But I also recognize that they’re not always possible in this world.</p>
<p>And if we can’t do the job perfectly (and we almost never can), we have to do the next best thing. In this case, if young girls are going to have sex, without their parents’ knowledge, whether anyone agrees or not, the best thing that can be done is to make it safe.</p>
<p>Do you agree or disagree? Isolate that single principle from all the others (you’re very good at this with other issues): if a young girl CANNOT BE STOPPED from having sex by any of the authorities figures in her life (normally because they don’t know, or whatever), is it not our moral responsibility to make sure she is as safe as possible? Or is it better to go with the “well, you took the risk” and let her screw up her life even more?</p>
<p>1 of 42,
I can respect your opinion that we IF WE CANNOT STOP a girl from having sex that we should help her have it safely. How many eleven year olds do you know that want to have sex? I’ve worked with kids that age in three school systems as a school nurse and teacher. Girls that age don’t want to have sex, but there are plenty of sick individuals who want to have sex with them. If a girl of eleven is going to a school nurse and asking for BC, she is crying out for help even if she does not know it. It is not healthy or normal for kids that age to be having sex and if they are, there is something very wrong going on with them. Again, they don’t need BC, they need adults in their lives to step forward, to parent and to be responsible for them.</p>
<p>Sarahsmom: Agreed. Those children need responsible adults. But sometimes, responsible adults are tough to find, especially in low-income situations. And in those same cases, the situation may not have met whatever criteria are necessary for child services to get involved. And if a case is borderline (are the parents neglectful, or just no particularly good?) I believe that shoving kids into the foster system can result in worse situations in the long run.</p>
<p>Which is why I support offering BC - because it will help some children; it will make them safer. And there is very, very little downside, other than sacrificing a completely consistent moral stand, which I’m happy to do in the interests of safety.</p>
<p>1 of 42, I can respect your opinion and I hope that the adults in charge in Maine use care, wisdom and responsibility in dealing with these young people.</p>
<p>yourworld, I was avoiding the topic because it brings up a lot of painful memories and feelings, but after awhile I got up the courage to read and finally I felt compelled to say something. The sexual abuse that I endured has affected me in nearly every aspect of my life. I would not wish it on anyone, and I would not even begin to compare myself to some of the horrific stories I’ve been told. I pray that the people in this school will have the courage to be responsible and help these poor young people.</p>
<p>07 Dad, coming back to this thread after several days off the computer–</p>
<p>I am sorry to hear about your classmate who committed suicide. I’m sorry she percieved her mother as threatening and uncaring in this situation. However, in general, pregnant women/girls tend to have a lower than average suicide rate. Things have certainly changed a lot since the 60’s–there is much more acceptance of single parenthood, much more help for pregnant women/girls etc. Also, I’m not sure of the age of your friend, but there is a difference between a 14-15yo 9th grader and an 11-12yo 6th grader. </p>
<p>What motivates me? I have 4 daughters (and 3 sons) My goal is to allow them to have a childhood by keeping them away from kids whose parents have taught them that it is just OK and inevitable to have sex at young ages, and adults who do not have their best interests in mind. I’ve taught my teenagers that if they’re not ready for parenthood, they’re not ready for sex. Children are better off being raised in a stable marriage. Sex, pregnancy and child rearing are serious business–waiting for marriage is the ideal. That said, I am sure my children would find me an approachable and loving mother if they should need help of any kind.</p>
<p>I still would like the information about the Texas teen birth statistics. </p>
<p>And I would also like to point out that recent studies have shown that children of incentuous relationships have only a slightly higher chance of birth defects than children of unrelated people (4-7% vs. 3-4%). So the idea, that you mentioned earlier in this thread, that children born of incest (most of which I suspect is stepfather/brother and stepdaugher/stepsister, so not related by blood) are very likely to be deformed and not wanted for adoption is wrong. Most of them are perfectly normal. (First cousin marriages are legal in almost all countries except the United States, and tend to be preferred in many cultures. . .) </p>
<p>Another thing that you were wrong about is the age at first marriage. Since the 1700s, the lowest average age at first marriage in the US, was actually in 1956 (20.5 for women). According to the statistics I found, it was 20.8 the 1780s and increased through the 1800s–remaining in the early to mid 20s throughout the 18th-20th centuries.
The idea that women reached a late puberty and immediately married and died in childbirth is not true. Cemeteries aren’t full of teen brides. (Of course people died young of all kinds of diseases and infections, and many women did die in childbirth. But a higher proportion of them were not teens, because most teens were not married).</p>
<p>The teen pregnancy/birth rate is most connected to how many teens are having sex–not how many had sex ed of what kind or how many try to use birth control–which often fails.</p>
<p>Are you kidding that we “cannot stop” an 11-year old girl from having sex?? Of course we can! Eleven-year-olds have no rights to privacy away from their parents/legal guardians. A parent/guardian can ABSOLUTELY stop an 11-year from having consensual sex. The problem is that many parents won’t do their jobs, and leave their kids alone to make terrible decisions.</p>