King Middle School in Portland, Maine will be the first school (I believe it is the first school in the country) to offer a full range of contraceptions (condoms, birth control, patches, etc) to students as young as 11 (They have been offering condoms since 2000). Not only that, but they are offering the full range of contraceptions without parent consent. Parents would have no way of knowing their eleven year old daughter or son was sexually active. This is because the school's health care center is confidential under state law. The decision was made based off of 17 reported teen pregnancies in Portland's three middle schools in the past four years.http://media.www.themichiganjournal.com/media/storage/paper255/news/2007/10/23/Perspectives/Birth.Control.At.School.Leads.To.PreTeen.Promiscuity-3050532.shtml
That is where I found the editorial piece.
I think that the bigger issue is not that 11 year olds are getting pregnant, but that they are having sex. The issue lies at home, parents are not educating their kids enough about sex and the consequences. The school's decision to offer a full range of contraceptions puts the thought of sex in the innocent minds of 11 year olds. 11 year olds are not old enough to deal with the consequences of sex. Emotional or physical.
The schools solution should not be to offer birth control but to offer counseling and education if they feel there is a high pregnancy rate. I agree with what Topelwski said in her editorial, that schools have found a way to only treat the symptoms rather than the cause.
Anyways I just thought that this would be good for the blog, so just let me know what you think.
1 comment:
I agree and disagree, I believe contraceptives should be offered to young adults no matter their age, if they are having sex or considering it. There are many reasons why sex is dangerous at a young age in physical and emotional ways.
One major problem with sex is that it breeds disease with multiple partners so if condoms are not stressed to young adults their are potential problems with disease. Another problem is that condoms do not protect against all diseases so children need a confidential place where they can find if they or their partner has a disease and rethink their choices. Sexual diseases don't give a physical sign all the time like the problem of getting pregnant does. Also being told that you have a disease like herpes or HIV that could damage the health of your future children at any age is devastating. I believe that is another topic that needs to be stressed to all that are sexually active.
Pregnancy is emotionally stressful for having the choice of an abortion in some places, adoption, and being a young mother. I agree that young men and women need to be taught about the seriousness of conceiving children after one act of sexual intercourse. However, hormones are rushing into young adults and abstinence is not as common in the youth today as it once was. Children today find experimenting with sex more appealing than drugs from my personal experience with talking to young girls. I feel as though it might be because drugs are explained in health classes that they are bad for everyone and when you grow up and get married you still shouldn't do them. Although with sex you can do it when you're "mature;" there is nothing more important in young adults than being "mature and cool." It seems as though the authorities fighting for abstinence, in my eyes, are the culprits of causing premarital sex because they explain it's for adults.
I believe with the way society has put stress on having sex as a physical need rather than a pleasure it has confused young minds. Abstinence it still the most effective birth control on lists of contraceptives, but it cannot be the be the only option stressed. The statistics show young adults are having sex at a younger age and they need to get a wide range of information about it so they make the choices about it rather than their parents because their parents are not normally the people who make and break the choice of having sex.
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