Too Young for Birth Control?
October 17, 2007
ABC has an article on How Young Is Too Young for Birth Control; the article highlights a proposal to give birth control to sexually active kids at a middle school in Maine. The school is already giving out condoms to these teens.
Apparently, Maine has a law that says you cannot have sex under age 14. I would wager a guess that Maine also has laws that say you cannot drive over the speed limit (at any age) but I would imagine that many people break that law. I do not think that I should have to point out that people don’t always follow the rules - especially hormonal teenagers.
But that is the real crux - this is a middle school - not all of these kids are even teenagers, they are pre-teens. However, if these kids are choosing to have sex then it is crucial that they are given access to birth control. They should definitely be choosing condoms over birth control to prevent disease and pregnancy. At least someone is there to educate these kids on proper birth control and disease prevention methods.
The students will need to have their parents permission to access any of the services offered by the health center. Many of the parents seem to be up in arms about this because they view the school as enablers of sexual activity. These kids would probably engage in sexual activity without protection just like many adults and not think of the consequences until later.
I think the real questions are: Would you want your child to die of AIDS? Would you want your child’s education to be over at age 11?
If you say yes, you should have your children taken away from you. If you say no, then you should support access to birth control.
They should probably start thinking about why their kids want to have sex at age 11. I think it would be wise to offer some kind of counseling to understand why these kids want to have sex at age 11.
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