Well I certainly don't want the Whip to keep whipping her head against the wall so maybe she should consider this:

Even if you DON'T give your child permission, what is going to stop another child from sharing or getting the pills for your daughter against your permission?

Also, what if you want your child to use the clinic to take her meds or inhaler etc in the clinic but are now afraid to have your child use the clinic at all?

I find this whole thing very interesting given the fact that up until now we coaches/teachers are NOT even allowed to give a child an advil for a headache.

A child with permissive parents doesn't NEED a school clinic to provide BC. So this really changes nothing.

Well I think it does. The school handing out BC pills is going to step up the accessibility percentage a whole lot higher than before. Before all this, an appointment with a doctor would have to be made by the parents and these parents would have to shell out the money for both the appt and the meds usually done when the parents suspect their girl is engaging in sex.

So if she's got a boyfriend...no way is she going to share her pills. And if her parents are paying? Little Tammy's out of luck. Poor girl. She gets pregnant.

Now all that has to be done is sign the permission slip and away she goes. Don't worry about payment. The taxpayers got that covered.

I didn't ignore your point. It just isn't relevant or correct. There are always mix ups and misinterpretations by parents who are deluged with lots of things to sign at work and for kids. Certainly you don't want there to even be the possibility of a mix up here. The point maybe be silly but recall just how many bureaucratic mix ups there are in modern education.

Not signing permission slips does not guarantee that BC won't be disseminated by some other means, "with the best interests of the children at heart" or by sharing by friends.

The overall point, educators and educational institutions should be providing students with an education. Where certain students need to have access to controlled substances, (medications) and lots do, the schools need to ensure the student who is has a prescription takes it, and not someone else.

When it comes to birth control, there is no need for students to take it at school, nor is there a need for it to be disseminated to an age group of children. It doesn't make sense to offer to children birth control for any reason. To do so will only encourage younger and younger sexual experimentation. Which is not the direction public schools should be encouraging students to go. Duh.

The point I made which you have yet to counter, is that parents probably don't want to be sending their children to school where birth control is available at the 11,12,13 year old level, or even under 18. It is not legal for students to be engaging in the behavior.

It's akin to offering cigarettes to fourth graders because eventually they will start to smoke. WTF?

I don't want my kids and I'm quite sure that other parents don't want their's going to a school that offers cigarettes to students or birth control, both activities of which are illegal. Smoking, though stupid, and hazardous long term, and radically addictive with the first pack, will not screwup a 13 year olds life instantly and irreparibly.

Having birth control dispensed to another student, even with parental consent, and having that student coerce an illicit sexual encounter with my child, possibly having the birth control method fail, resulting in my 13 old being pregnant is a screwup that will instantly and irreparably harm my minor child. This is not a scenario I want to entertain or have to work to prevent with a child. Nobody else wants to deal with that either.

As children mature, and become more and more interested in dating or the opposite sex, highschool, the role of a parent and educators may change. I can see clearly how the role of a parent changes from protector to guider. Children at ages 10,11,12,13 are not prepared or able to make their own life decisions and should not be equipped or encouraged to be making them before they are ready, by the government or educators.

Educators job is to teach, the more they stick to that the better.

If you even ask an 11 or 12 year old, do they even prefer to concentrate on the opposite sex? Doubt it, so why should educators be pushing unnatural and unethical choices on students.

Do you want to be come sexually active before it's legal and you are emotionally and physically ready?
Do you want to introduce the possibility of acquiring a life long STD?
Do you want to be stigmatized for the rest of you public school career if you do get pregnant?

I mean come on, we should be encouraging our kids to enjoy their kid life. This decision is wrong and clearly nobody is better served by children having access to birth control.

Bingo!

DanGreene posts:

Dan, that's it in a nutshell. School policies should always be aimed to the common good for all and this particular decision is wrong....Trouble is nowadays, what is wrong to some folks isn't wrong to others...moral relativism is alive and well and as has been shown is applied even when the health and welfare of children is concerned.


DanGreene posts:

I remember this was the first response of some parents when this story first broke. They obviously were in a position where they could make the choice to move their children to an alternate type of school. This unfortunately, is not an option available to most.

Problem is the government has a monoply on education...there is no choice in public education and these people are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

"Trouble is nowadays, what is wrong to some folks isn't wrong to others...moral relativism is alive and well and as has been shown is applied even when the health and welfare of children is concerned."

I'm not a religious nut. I'm ok with 18 year old screwing their brains out, and getting contraceptives from the government. The difference is, they are not minors and it is not an illegality.

Minors can and will be prosecuted for rape crimes even if the sex they have is consensual depending on the state. It isn't ethical for the children to be having sex, or the children that could be created by illicit activity to have to be taken care of by children unable to care for them. Anybody jumping in front of the freight train to defend the decision is just wrong.

The moral aspect of it is bad, minors having sex, but the ethical aspect of having a government supporting illicit activity or enabling it by the actions of unwise adults in temporary custody of the decision making is what is intolerable.

"Problem is the government has a monoply on education...there is no choice in public education and these people are stuck between a rock and a hard place."

They have a mandate, but I agree I think we could be better served by private education. I think rather than private education, we should look to ways to make public education more like private education. We should find ways to reward teachers and schools for good performance, and work to improve schools that don't perform well. Rather than giving bonuses to teachers, give that money to the school to upgrade it's technology or fix infrastructure, whatever is preventing students from learning well.

Boneheaded and stupid decisions like this though don't bode well for higher education. I think it isn't just school that needs to be fixed, but government in general.

They changed the rules that parents could opt out of the birth control but still allow their kids access to the clinic and also that only girls over 14 would be given the pill.

Want to bet the COURTS (not parents, and not the schools) decide that this implies an age of consent of 14, and that anyone engaging in sex with a minor of that age cannot be convicted of Statutory Rape?

Like I said, moral relativism is alive and well.

Good points.

We would never agree on this, LW.

No one should, period.



This is most probably true.

But thinking through even this..


If you had started using birth control drugs at this tender age, it's quite possible that you could have ended up with other problems, such as sterility, cancer, etc.

you missed it again. the parents at this school signed their paper work 2 months ago. the clinic has just be authorized to hand out the pills. so all of those parents who signed paper work two months ago had no idea about this pill problem. now if i was the school it would mean that if we decided to give all kids, who already had permission, vitamin pills. then it would be legal for us to do so. does this make the parents stupid or lazy. no it doesn't not. it means that the school is using a loop hole to give out those pills.

"This makes no sense. It takes a male and a female to create a child, does it not?"

You said it not me, but when I was in Middle school-High school 1994-2000 yes it took a male and a female having sexual intercourse to create a child. It still does as far as I know Whip.

"The only birth control measure available to boys is a condom, something they can readily purchase at any convenience store or gas station men's room. With or without your consent."

Not true or accurate, there are lot of methods,
A. There is the pull out, (a method we were taught in highschool of all places with the side snicker that is has a low chance of success
B. There is the timing method, where you have sex when a woman, not girl, is not ovulating.
C. There is the get her drunk or high so she wont remember who I am method, inner cities right Whip?
D. Condom 98% effective when used perfectly.
E. Anal penetration, (also taught to us in highschool)
F. There is abstinence, where you don't fuck at all until you are ready to deal with what could happen.
G. "The shot" which lowers sperm production, probably not available to 11-17 year olds, yet.

"A female classmate taking BC pills is not going to get YOUR daughter pregnant, even if she does 'coerce' her into sexual activity."

Great point, unless I have a son, and she and he decide that because she is on BC, a potentially failable product/method of contraception, it's ok to do it, say they don't get pregnant but he gets a life altering STD. Nothing personal, but suppose your daughter has beee busy, only because of your "approval by permission" and she has mutiple STD's but is untested and diagnosed because you didn't know she was sexually active right, and my son gets her pregnant. Now we hit the jackpot Whip. See how it gets me involved because it takes TWO TO FUCK!

Now did I give my CONSENT! to either of them, no, but free love/birth control dispensing because you gave permission for your daughter to have illegal sex makes it more likely that my son will be impacted and thus me.

I don't even have kids Whip and I can see this reality, perhaps it is because you don't have kids that you don't but I don't understand why I can see it but you can't.

"A condom is far more likely to fail than BC pills."
Cite some stats.

"If I had my way, Dan, young women would be put on long-term birth control (like Norplant or any of the other 5- year methods) immediately after their first period."

Again you said it not me, I'm glad you are being honest that your viewpoint is that if you had your way 9-10-11 year old girls are given the expectation that they should be having sex.
Before it is moral, legal, or ethical for them to do so.

"Pregnancy at such a tender age is devastating, no matter what decision is ultimately made in regards to that pregnancy."

So is losing a baby because your body is unable to handle a pregnancy before you are mature and developed, contracting an STD, being accused of rape, being jailed for consensual sex and serving a rape sentence, being stigmatized throughout high school as easy.

"I know. I've been there. And as such I feel slightly more qualified to offer up an opinion on the matter, although I recognize that at least in JU, I hold the minority opinion."

It is just as valid as anyone else's opinion, even if it sounds like it's from a Stanley Kubrick movie or tales form the dark side episode.

"Most of my sexual partners, btw, were not even in school, and I was eventually impregnated by an 18 year old GI who was stationed there in Augsburg. Being a minor, I had no choice in the decision my parents made for me (in all their Baptist wisdom and respect for the sanctity of life) and I had an abortion the day before my 14th birthday."

I'm not sure I understand you here Whip, Do you not think that by encouraging sex rather than working to prevent it, helping children 9-15 year olds and young adults 15-17 year olds make better decisions and hold a more educated outlook on their future that makes more sense, than encouraging underage and illicit sexual intercourse for the sole purpose of experimentation or pleasure at the risk of all the bad to terrible things that can happen to them when they do.

"I am pro-life to the core. I am solidly for anything that prevents pregnancy, including abstinence and birth control, whatever it takes."

I'm pretty sure the tag Pro life, means taking responsibility for the life you create, not working to prevent it once you have gone ahead and made it, whether it was right or wrong to do so.

"In a perfect world, no child would have sex before they are ready to accept the responsibility of raising a child. In a perfect world, any child even considering having sex prior to that would have a heart to heart with mom and dad, and that heart to heart would result in her changing her mind and deciding not to. In a perfect world, any child deciding to go against mom and dad's wishes and have sex anyway would be able to go to their parents and be given the information and materials needed to prevent STDs and pregnancy.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world, so the way I see it is this--in our imperfect world, if a child decides to have sex against mom and dad's wishes and mom and dad would rather keep their heads buried in the sand until disaster strikes, that child ought to have a way to make another decision, a decision to avoid that catastrophe in the first place."

Which is why your idea of protecting children by giving them the keys to the car, cigarattes, booze, and birth control, at the ripe old age of 9-17 makes no sense whatsoever.

"No 13 year old should ever have to lay on the abortionists table."

No 13 year old should be fucking.

"If I had had access to birth control, I would have been able to avoid that."

I don't feel like I'm being fair criticizing you and I don't know the whole story. You choose to continue to put your personal life out there. Whats on the page is fair game, right Whip. If you were raped, that is one thing, and I agree with you that no child should ever have to deal with that.

However, that is not what this decision was about, most underage pregnancies and pregnancies in general are not the result of non-consensual sex. Often underage sex doesn't even accompany relationships. As an adult you have the skills and the tools, along with the stability to deal with becoming a parent or choosing not to. However as a child, you do not. We should not be allowing our government to introduce any additional risks to our children than the ones they might undertake on their own through stupidity or youthful misadventure.

If you have made a better decision, i.e. not to have sex, you would not have had to face an abortion or the alternative, raising a child which you were not equipped to care for.

"All you have to do, Dan, (and the rest of you) is not sign the freakin' permission slip."

Ok so I don't sign it but maybe 50 parents/students out of 500 do. Say half of those students bow to "peer pressure" and "media influences" and maybe lack of guidance from their parents. Whatever, So 25 middle schools students are actively trying to have sex with my minor child. Do you see the problem?

Again it is neither,
moral for children to be raising children
ethical for two people to create a life they cannot care for
legal for under age kids to have sex....

Also, STD's are spread when people have sex without using protection or sticking to trusted and clean monogamous partners. Where I come from Middle school students aren't educated on how to prevent STD's just what they are. This is because people from my neck of the woods have the good sense to expect their minor child who is 5 years removed form learning how to cross a street looking both ways, isn't participating in sexual intercourse. We are taught and learn it well in high school because that is the age young adults start to take risks and get into trouble.

The problem of teenage pregnancy is severe enough at this age, why move it back 5 more years with the stupidity of encouraging sex between children?

Please take a few moments reexamine your own thoughts and explain again, why encouraging this can of worms, at a younger age than 18, is a good idea for our children?