When it comes to the sexual activity of our young population, I tend to be a realist. The kids are going to experiment, and they are going to be sexually active. And teenage girls are going to get pregnant. I certainly do not support or encourage youngsters being active in this manner because I don’t feel they are emotionally ready for that level of commitment nor are they ready for the consequences.
Today’s decision by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to not allow the so-called morning after pill to be sold to those under 18 gives me pause. As mentioned above, teenagers are going to be active and teenage girls are going to get pregnant. No amount of burying your head in the sand is going to change this fact. And teen pregnancy is not a pleasant road. Very few of these girls and their child(ren) make it out of poverty unless given tremendous support from their immediate family. At the risk of being obvious, the best way to avoid getting pregnant is not participate in the activity that causes pregnancy. However, reality is: kids are active.
Looking at the other side of the coin is this pill is designed to terminate a pregnancy. If you believe that life begins at conception, then this is akin to abortion. As Christians is that something you can support, knowing that if the girl take the pregnancy to term, her life (and the baby’s) life will forever be altered?
Most of my life I have held a firm belief that you sleep in the bed that you have made. As my kids will attest, I am the kind of guy that will tell you not to put your hand in the flame, and I will tell you what the consequences are if you put your hand in the flame. I will tell you this several times. But if you insist on putting your hand in the flame after I have told you what is going to happen, I’ll bandage your hand, make sure you are going to be OK, but I will not kiss your booboo. But on the subject of teen pregnancy my feelings are more muddled and I am less inclined to be so hard-nosed. Hormones cause people to do stupid things and to lose the sense of reasoning. Should a teenage girl be made to pay the life-altering price just because they made this mistake?
I just don’t know.
Is the best answer here for us to be sanctimonious and not allow teenage girls to end something that will have a tremendous negative impact on their lives? Or do we turn our backs on or heartfelt beliefs and allow the pregnancy to be terminated?
I wish I had an answer.
As you might guess from this little post, I am torn. My convictions state that the pill should not be allowed. I try to live my life as best as I can in a way that I think the Lord will be pleased with my thoughts and actions. But I also do not want to see a teenage girl have her life driven towards poverty because of a one-time poor decision made in the heat of a backseat.
It is a little slippery about the mechanisms of the pill being abortive or preventative. My main problem with the "morning after pill" and the regular pill is that the artificial hormones are harmful to women's bodies. They are linked to breast cancer, they can cause fatal blood clots. These hormones also wreak havoc on women's emotional stability, sex drive and can potentially affect future sterility. This is one reason plead with all my friend's with teenage daughters to consider their daughter's growing body and put off prescribing the pill until full sexual maturity. And I am torn on the M.A. P also for adults but for teenagers, I am totally against making it available OTC. While one or two doses may not cause long term effects, Teenagers, which you admit, don't have good decision making abilities, may decide to take the high hormone dosage of the morning after pill after every sexual encounter, or perhaps find her self 4 months pregnant and try to take 15 M.A.P doses to induce her own abortion. The FDA knows this but is playing up to an agenda of advocation sexual freedom at all costs. This decision is the only thing I can applaud from this administration.
ReplyDeleteMy opinion is simply that if the morning-after pill is sold over the counter without any age limits, it's a health problem more than a moral one (currently anyone can buy it without a prescription as long as they are 18 or over, just by requesting it at any pharmacy which carries it). The average young teen -- or heaven forbid, preteen -- cannot successfully follow the directions on a bottle of cough syrup safely, so why in the world would we let them buy & use these strong hormonal drugs without adult supervision?! Resourceful & sensible children under age 18 who want this drug will talk an older sibling or friend into getting it for them (since it's non-prescription, after all).
ReplyDeleteBut honestly, most teens probably don't even know what the morning-after pill IS. There are plenty of adults over 18 who don't; I know a couple who had unprotected sex when they were 19 and 22, who spent the next few weeks worrying about whether a pregnancy would result (it did), and when I asked why she didn't just get the morning-after pill, they both looked at me blankly. I explained what it was, and they were both surprised to hear such a thing existed. And these were intelligent young adults, not clueless idiots!
Jeanne, Regina, thank you for your well thoughts comments. One of the issues I have to deal with in this matter is that I am not a female and the decision to take this step does not have the same level of impact on me as it does women. Yes, as a potential father of the child I do believe that I should have input, but the decision ultimately rests with the woman.
ReplyDeleteI believe that life begins at conception. We all make choices and we need to accept responsibility for our choices. I disagree with your generalization that " a teenage girl (will)have her life driven towards poverty because of a one-time poor decision made in the heat of a backseat." More often than not, becoming pregnant is not from "one time," as a woman is only fertile about 3 days per month. How likely is it that a girl does it just once? You are saying that you think a girl's future lifestyle is more important than a new God given life. Also, it is unfortunate that boys are not being taught to be men and accept responsibility for their actions, and support the child, or marry the girl. The MAP can cause an abortion. Care Net pregnancy centers offer abortion education. The MAP "may work by preventing the egg and sperm from meeting by delaying ovulation; it won’t disrupt an implanted pregnancy, but may prevent a newly formed life from implanting in the uterus." http://www.pregnancycare.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5&Itemid=7
ReplyDeleteMSNBC has an article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35448556/ns/us_news-the_elkhart_project/t/baby-changes-everything-true-cost-teen-pregnancys-uptick/#.TuO0_mO5ORk
that states that a teen mother will earn $1,866 less per year for the next 15 years ($28,000 total), than if they had delayed a child until age 20-21. Well, that's $155.55/month less they will earn.
If one of my daughters became pregnant, of course we would support her and help her with her child. We would in no way approve the murder of innocent human life.
In addition, 67% of women that get breast cancer have had an abortion. The MAP pill is suspected of increased risk of ectopic pregnancy. Not to mention the emotional and other physical effects from these decisions. This culture of promiscuity and death is rooted in the twisted thought that what was once bad, is now good. A must read is the book, "Unplanned," by Abby Johnson. She worked at Planned Parenthood and reveals the twisted mindset and verbiage used to blindly lead girls and woman to do the unthinkable. Also, "Why Pro Life?" by Randy Alcorn is a good book.
By the way, I was unplanned, but I was given life and adopted into a wonderful Catholic family.
After I left this blog, I headed over to WND and found Joseph Farah's editorial, "Obama's Abortion at 7-11". It magnify's the MAP as being even far more reaching.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=375957
Rose, it is pretty much a statistical fact that young, unwed mothers and their children have a more difficult time moving out of poverty than just about any group in society that don't have a background in crime. Many of the unwed mothers don't graduate high school, much less go onto college. No hs diploma, no job worth a dang. It is not easy trying to raise a family working at the local mini-mart.
ReplyDeleteAs my post should have indicated in this and other posts, I am having difficulties with my stance. I do have troubles with the choice between the life that God has provided and the difficulties the young mother is going to have if she tried to raise the child(ren). God did give us free will but at the same time He expects to live our lives as close to His example as possible. My free will says women should have the ability to choose, but in my desire to life as close to God as possible I do feel that life is sacred. So far, striving to reach God has turned my life around, but not quite as far as it should. I am still a work in progress, and always will be.
That's just it. They do have the right to choose--not to have sex. Choices have consequences. Many say, "Kids will do it anyway." Well, yes, and no. Parents can teach them, protect them, and instill the wisdom to make good choices. Or they can allow the TV to determine their values, and let the world bring their children up. It's my opinion that if a teenage mother has a hard go of it, they will be in a better position to teach *her* children why promiscuity is a bad choice with the testimony of her own life. I hold this opinion because one of my most dear friends showed up to 10th grade everyday during her pregnancy. She did have a rough time without the support of the child's father, but her family was there for her and now she has a wonderful husband, a great job and two more children besides. Teenage pregnancy is not the worst thing to happen to a girl.
ReplyDeleteAs I said teenagers do have choices, except in the case of rape, which is a horrific thing to happen to anybody. To this I say we as a society need to start protecting our daughters. We need to keep them near and care where they are going, and with whom they are socializing, and what they are wearing! Call me a fuddy-duddy, but these old- fashioned ideas protected young girls and should not have been thrown out the window!
Hi Rob,
ReplyDeleteYou may want to read the book The marketing of Evil, by David Kupelian. The abortions rights marketing campaign has been hugely successful by diverting attention from the core issues of exactly what an abortion does to both the unborn child and the mother. The debate has focused on
the manufactured issue of "choice," rather than on the morality of killing the unborn. The created issue is now, "who decides?"
Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the pro-abortion group, Nat'l Assoc. for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL), says that they persuaded the media in the 1960's to announce that they had conducted a poll that said that 60% of Americans were in favor of abortion. This lie fooled Americans into thinking they were in the minority in their beliefs. This was an outright lie, as no poll was conducted because if they did, they knew they would be defeated. They aroused enough sympathy to sell their program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the US. The actual figure was close to 100,000, but we told the media it was 1 million.
NARAL lied more and said that women dying from illegal abortions was 10,000/ year, when it was in reality, 200-250/year. So then they convinced Americans that the only women that would get legal abortions were those who were seeking them illegally, so only 10,000 legal abortions a year.
In 1969 after 2 years of work, NARAL started abortions in New York. They were inundated with abortion applications and averaged 120 every day. In 2 years, Nathanson had performed 60,000 abortions.
I think if people really knew that they had been lied to in order to pass this horrific policy, I wonder how they would feel knowing they had been deceived in order to murder innocent human life. Even Roe v Wade was a lie. Clinic personnel are specifically trained to "sell" an abortion. It is for the money.
Read Psalms 139:13-14. God created everyone of us from the moment of conception. No one has the "right to choose" to murder the God given gift of life.