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‘The Talk’ with Connie: Birth control pills, condoms and patches, oh my!
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Posted by Tue Oct 23, 2007 17:10:00 PDT
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Since when did the basics of education change from reading, writing and arithmetic to distributing birth control prescriptions in middle schools?  A school board in Portland, Maine voted to allow a health clinic to provide a full range of contraceptives to students aged 11 to 13.  I am outraged. 

 

Most of you know, I teach abstinence to junior high students.   So, when I asked my students their opinion regarding this policy; they were shocked and stated that it was implied permission.  Most of the students were really against the policy due to the fact they said “we’re too young.” In the 12 years I have taught junior high students, I can assess that they are not ready for the responsibility of neither birth control nor the complicated relationship that ensues when sex is involved.

 

By the way, I do teach a class on birth control; the very best birth control being self control.  But when I show students how birth control is used, why it works or fails; they always come to the conclusion that abstinence is the best choice.

 

My favorite is a lesson on birth control pills. I always ask girls “who forgot their homework or lunch for any day that week?”  I make them raise their hands, and then I ask, “Who forgot twice?”  They have to raise both hands.  Then I tell them if they were on the birth control pill they would have gotten pregnant, and if they raised both hands, they had twins.  Seventy  percent of junior high girls raise their hands, but I always tell them, “don’t feel bad because 80 to 90 percent of the boys will be pregnant tomorrow, and many of the boys will have triplets. “

 

Birth control isn’t called birth stop.  It is very difficult to stop a totally natural process of one egg and 600 million sperm trying to reach that one egg.  Birth control fails for adults, so logic tells me that it will fail twice as much for any teenager.  Have you figured out yet, that if anything that can go wrong for a teenager, it usually does?  If you are married and your birth control fails it is not as big as a deal if you are 15 and the birth control fails.

 

In spite of all the birth control available.  We still have one teenage girl getting pregnant every 30 seconds — that's one million pregnant unmarried teenage girls each year.  If the birth control clinic in King Middle School is trying to prevent pregnancies, then abstinence has a 100 percent success rate.  I love those odds for your teenagers.

 

The medical complications of a birth control pill or patch are becoming very alarming to me.  Hormone based birth control does work very well, but the side affects can be grave.  The birth control patch is currently involved in many lawsuits due to blood clots and strokes caused by the high amount of estrogen released from the patch into the bloodstream.  

 

I am very concerned about a young girl altering her hormone levels.   What we do know about hormones is they can cause nausea, weight gain, and moodiness.  A hormone based birth control literally tricks her body into thinking she is pregnant thus the lack of ovulation and the symptoms of pregnancy.

 

So you can see, birth control is a very complicated issue even for an adult.  Making birth control available to junior high students on their campus opens up a gamut of  complicated situations.   What about the rampant spread  of STD’s? Should the middle school start plans for a day care center  like some high schools have?  Who is responsible for the child when they need treatment for pregnancy or an STD?  I think the domino effect will be tragic in the sense that a school board should never lose sight of its purpose — to educate and provide the tools for success.  Not set them up for failure.  Hey Portland, Maine School Board leave our kids alone. 

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