HOPE
11-03-2007, 09:56 PM
Children and the Pill
by Froma Harrop
Providence Journal
Thirteen-year-olds come to school very pregnant. What do you do? Do you lock up their "lovers" — and their parents, too, if you can find them — and send the eighth-graders to a home for wayward girls? Or do you start prescribing birth-control pills to children?
Some choice.
Health clinics at middle schools in Seattle and Baltimore already prescribe contraceptives. A proposal to do the same in Portland, Maine, has set off angry protest spilling into the talk shows. This is one of those controversies that throw culture, poverty, religion, conservatism, liberalism, sex and children into one unsavory stew.
Most every responsible adult agrees on this: The idea of girls 14, 13 or younger having sex lives is ghastly. So the brawl isn't over whether there's a bad problem, but the proper response.
for more...
http://www.creators.com/opinion/froma-harrop/girls-and-the-pill-2007-10-30.html
by Froma Harrop
Providence Journal
Thirteen-year-olds come to school very pregnant. What do you do? Do you lock up their "lovers" — and their parents, too, if you can find them — and send the eighth-graders to a home for wayward girls? Or do you start prescribing birth-control pills to children?
Some choice.
Health clinics at middle schools in Seattle and Baltimore already prescribe contraceptives. A proposal to do the same in Portland, Maine, has set off angry protest spilling into the talk shows. This is one of those controversies that throw culture, poverty, religion, conservatism, liberalism, sex and children into one unsavory stew.
Most every responsible adult agrees on this: The idea of girls 14, 13 or younger having sex lives is ghastly. So the brawl isn't over whether there's a bad problem, but the proper response.
for more...
http://www.creators.com/opinion/froma-harrop/girls-and-the-pill-2007-10-30.html