Posted on 10/23/2007 4:47:25 PM PDT by wagglebee
This decision shows the muddled thinking of adults who, while loving children, have lost track of the best interests of children. Richard Verrier, who supported the vote for birth control, told Associated Press, "It's not enough to depend on parents to protect their children because there may be students who can't discuss things with their parents."
Well, Mr. Verrier, it's too bad the Portland School Committee failed to act as "caring parents" to "protect their children." Any loving parent will know that a child 11 to 13 is not old enough to engage in sexual activity of any kind. A loving parent protecting their child would take every possible step to teach, counsel, mentor and direct their child away from sexual activity.
Instead, Portland School Committee members acted as rebuffed taxpayers who do not want to spend dollars on rearing babies born to children. Even when the district provided condoms at their clinics they reported that 17 middle school students had become pregnant in the last four years, seven of them in the 2006-7 school year.
Responding to teen sex as a teen pregnancy issue, their emphasis on birth control tells students that having sex is not the problem. Having babies is what the adults who "care about them" object to.
One must wonder at the factual information the Committee relied on to make their decision. Firstly, teen sex is not just a problem when it creates babies.
Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, points out the obvious. "Whenever an 11-year-old is having sex, there is a problem much bigger than whether or not she will become pregnant, because a child that young who has the opportunity to have sex -- let alone feels she is mature enough to deal with the physical and emotional effects of intercourse -- is, in most cases, seeking intimacy and approval because it is void on all other levels in her life."
This search for love is what leads to teen pregnancy. Engaging in the lives of teens, demonstrating true affection and love for their welfare, is a costly investment. But it is what prevents teen pregnancy. Instead of providing what teens really need, the Committee opted to throw pills and condoms at them.
They will be disappointed. They will continue to witness teen births. Given typical use, the overall failure rate for condoms in preventing pregnancy is approximately 15 percent. For teens, this failure rate increases to 22 percent. When you promote condoms to teens, you are promoting a 22 percent failure rate.
Likewise, chemical birth control has its own failure rates. Dr. Patricia Sulak, a leading researcher of birth control, makes it a practice to ask her adult audiences to raise their hands if they or someone they know became pregnant while using the birth-control pill. With regularity, the room is filled with hands waving in the air.
Evaluating contraception failure rates for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), the Committee has now become a key causative factor in this epidemic. Condoms, despite regular media hype, fail to prevent serious STD infections, including incurable genital herpes. One in five people over the age of 12 now have genital herpes and carry the virus on body areas not covered by the condom. Talk about failure!
And if you want to ensure failure, just give a pack of birth-control pills or a patch to an 11-year-old. Reassured by adults she trusts that she is "protected" against pregnancy, what chance is there that she will also use condoms? Chemical contraception offers absolutely NO protection against STDs. Automatic failure!
Committee members will find themselves regretting their actions, even if it takes several years for them to see their error. Not so for the teens who accept the Committee's "solutions" for teen pregnancy.
These teens will begin reaping the "rewards" of failure right away. They will experience the failures of the solutions promoted by adults who wanted a quick fix at the expense of teens who will be left to deal with the here-and-now failures of the quick fix.
Contraception will fail to safeguard our children. And by leading our children to contraception, the Committee has failed our children. A double dose of failure ... and we will all pay the final price.
The left's agenda DOES NOT INCLUDE protecting children.
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“have lost track of the best interests of children”
Leftists are only interested in reducing parental control and increasing state control of children. The interests of the children are irrelevant.
what is the age of consent? can’t these progressives be arrested for ‘contributing to the delinquency of a minor’?
when they all turn out sterile, i hope they are happy with all the law suits they get
This is a prime example of why I call public schools Marxist indoctrination centers.
Now a parent or other adult can sexually abuse their child and not worry about detection from an unwanted pregnancy or a nosy doctor wanting to know why an 11 year old needs BC.
Where in the hell are the law suits?!!!! If the school dispensed aspirin without parental consent, or took the kid to a shooting range without parental consent, there would be a thousand of them.
“The State presents itself as Mother and Father (or, if you want to take it to another level, as a god). Parents no longer have any decision-making power because the State has that power now. Meanwhile, perverted individuals use the power of the State to desensitize parents and children alike to child/adult sexual relations while making the Age of Consent redundant. The millions of confused souls and tainted minds will be so busy either satisfying their lusts or struggling to piece together bits and pieces of a broken psyche that itll be easy to keep them conditioned to the ideological training theyve received in their schooling. That ideological training will consist of the believe that the only good and successful society is a Democratic/Socialist one.”
Are you saying that the Democratic party of America is planning the organized rape of children in order to achieve and maintain power?
It looks more like he's saying the DemocRATs are organizing the chaotic rape of children in order to achieve and maintain power.
Six of one, half-dozen of the other.
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Hm?....
Are these the same kids who are smart enough to find a competent abortionist, but whose parents are too dumb to use a voucher wisely?
The left’s agenda DOES NOT INCLUDE protecting children.
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Let´s start calling them what they really are. They are Marxists.
Marxism is our nation´s most dangerous and important enemy, and their most effective weapon against freedom are our children. The Marxists have thoroughly and completely infiltrated our government K-12 schools and nearly all of our colleges and universities.
We can survive a nuclear suit case bomb but we will not survive if the Marxist succeed in indoctrinating the next generation of voters, and the future mothers and fathers of highly dysfunctional families.
The solution:
1) First, use the word that fits: Marxism. We MUST start calling the enemy who and what he is.
2) We must shut down the Marxist´s most important weapon. We must work to shut down government K-12 schools!
3) We must work to reform our colleges and universities, close them down, and /or open new ones.
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It is Marxists who are organizing the rape of children. They need highly dysfunctional families and future voters if they are to succeed in destroying freedom. What better way to insure this than by controlling education. ( government K-12 and our colleges and universities.)
The Democratic Party is merely a cover for the Marxists who have thoroughly and completely infiltrated and corrupted that party.
I actually think that the explosion in sex amongst teenagers and young teenages comes from the failure of the consumerist/capitalist system to provide any form of meaning to existence.
Free trade has provided the incentive for meaningful productive work to be shipped off-shore to other countries.
The consequence of “Free Trade” and globalisation has been to reduce opportunity for Americans in a wide range of occupations.
A consequence of this “Third World-isation” of the US (in the name of all that is held dear in the US - free enterprise) has been to bring about “Third World-isation” amongst sectors of the US teenage population, namely, an increase in the birth rate.
Education has lost its relevance - not because of any “left wing ideology”, but because even the relevance of learning to read has no meaning when people watch DVD and TV, learning to write has become irrelevant when we accept text message language and arithmetic has become irrelevant if we accept electronic calculators for basic arithmetic.
Consumerism is no substitute for love. Many posts have pointed out how much work it is to love a child, but whilst ever we allow capitalism to parade a long list of “wants” as “needs” and there is urgency to provide these to children, the long hours of work, insufficient income, insufficient opportunity will have only one effect, teenagers seeking solace in sex, a substitute for love, just as consumerism is a stupid substitute for a sense of feeling adequate with one’s current possessions.
In a democracy, everyone is responsible for the outcomes. The truly irresponsible say “Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for them”
But then again, America, we voted for it.
In a democracy, every one is responsible for the outcomes, even those that proudly proclaim “Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for them” (or vote at all).
The State, the Marxists, whatever you call them, have been sincerely and honestly chosen by the majority of people in the USA. More particularly, the many years of the two Bushes have only entrenched their power.
It is a strange thing that Marxism, in your view, should flourish under the allegedly most right wing presidents the USA has ever seen.
References to the various Amendments to the US constitution do not help any one’s arguments - they were put there either by the founding fathers, or a free vote exercised in a free democracy.
People’s votes on election days is shaped by the power of the media and the advertising - as always, by voting for money, which is technically a “plutocracy”, rather than for policy, America has instituted the governance that it deserves. Remove the worship of money, and democracy can flourish.
Bush should have been accountable for the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq, perhaps his economic policies were of the same kind of misinformation, “Stealth Marxism” in the name of “Free Trade and the American Way” and people voted for him - laughter out loud!
I am not suggesting that the alternative is any better, but what sort of democracy is it that only permits “Brand A” or “Brand B” - anywhere else, “Marxist-style” consumer protection laws would be invoked to increase the range of competition. Rolling around on the floor laughing.
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