American middle school to offer birth control

[smerf]

@SuchAFob

It simply isn’t safe to put such a young child on hormones. us women have a fragile chemistry. You can cause serious long term issues by messing it up too early.

I hear what you are saying. This is a very troubling issue. I guess the silver lining is that the pills will probably only be handed out to a very small number of girls who are having sex.

Is it better to have a 12 y/o girl on the pill or pregnant? A crappy choice either way.

[DesperateHousewife]

@smerf

[quote=“SuchAFob”]It simply isn’t safe to put such a young child on hormones. us women have a fragile chemistry. You can cause serious long term issues by messing it up too early.

I hear what you are saying. This is a very troubling issue. I guess the silver lining is that the pills will probably only be handed out to a very small number of girls who are having sex.

Is it better to have a 12 y/o girl on the pill or pregnant? A crappy choice either way. [/quote]

How about adults making sure that kids stay kids. Why don’t we just bring back child marriages. If they are having babies and sex, then marriage seems to be right.

[v11]

i think what’s missing from the discussion is a greater degree of urgency. how would you feel if 8 and 9 year olds were getting pregnant? would that be your tipping point to advocate a more proactive approach? and did you know it is not uncommon for 9 year olds to have a period? even if you say pregnancies in that age group are next to nil, i think we should use the disgust and dismay we would feel at seeing an 8/9 year old pregnant and project that onto the 11 to 13 year olds. our lack of urgency i think is due to thinking that they are doing it for pleasure and that they are not really being that physically or emotionally harmed by it, especially if they are using b irth control. what do you think policy would be if there were an increase in 8/9 year old pregnancies? birth control? i don’t think so. family services intervention would be more like it.

[SuchAFob]

Well in the end an abortion would cause less havoc on the body than prematurely putting them on hormones. PLUS women on birth control are much more likely to forgo use of a condom… which when you are talking about sexually active kids sounds pretttty dangerous.

[smerf]

@SuchAFob

Well in the end an abortion would cause less havoc on the body than prematurely putting them on hormones.

Are you sure about this? I know a couple of women who had abortions when they were young and miscarriages later in life. They believe a link exists between the abortions and miscarriages. I don’t know if that’s true, but they believe it. At the very least, an abortion would be emotionally rough on a young girl.

Also, what health issues are raised by young girls taking birth control pills?

On a different note, here’s what some of the King students feel about this story:

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” cautioned Katy DeJesus, 13, an eighth-grader at King. “Make sure you know all of the important things before you judge people – and their school.”

“King Middle School is a great place to be and a safe place to be,” said Grania Power, 14. “And you shouldn’t believe everything you hear about us.”

Two seats away, Hugh Carroll, 13, had a slightly different message for the TV trucks that have sprouted daily this week across Brighton Avenue from the school’s main entrance.

“You can interview me,” Hugh said, “if you give me 10 bucks.”

“Some people across the country are looking at King Middle School girls and going, ‘Oh, gosh! They must be terrible! They have to give them birth control pills!’” said Devon Miller, 13. “That’s really insulting to me.”

Madeleine Weatherhead, 13, agreed.

“Just because we’re offering birth control doesn’t mean the major percentage of King is sexually active,” she said. “We shouldn’t stereotype.”

They also resent the fact that while virtually all of the kids who are sexually active are “the oldest eighth-graders,” the media focus has been squarely on 11-year-old sixth-graders who, Devon noted, “probably don’t even know what birth control is.” [/quote]

And, my favorite . . .

[quote]Hugh Carroll, while noting that “the girls are taking this way too seriously,” said he too had empathy for the younger kids who couldn’t seem to escape the long lenses of the TV cameras. His younger brother ate lunch the other day in the glare of a TV spotlight aimed into the lunch room from across the street.

It got so bad, Hugh said, that at one point, “I was going to go up to the camera and say, ‘I’m the father of four! I can’t take it anymore!’ …”

:bravo:

pressherald.mainetoday.com/story … PHnws&pg=2

[housecat]

@SuchAFob

PLUS women on birth control are much more likely to forgo use of a condom… which when you are talking about sexually active kids sounds pretttty dangerous.

This same school has already been handing out free condoms for about five years. That’s what I don’t get about this; who is having sex with these girls? The boys and girls at this school already have the condoms. They refuse to use them? More likely, I think, it’s adult males, or older male teens, who are having sex with these girls. And even if it is the “oldest eight graders,” that’s too young.

And about the sixth graders who don’t know what birth controle is, I was two years ahead of my brother in school, and as an eighth grader, I learned things off the walls of the girls room in his school that I hadn’t learned yet from my peers! And I’ve not been an eighth grader for about 24 years now.

I’m with v about this. There should be much more intervention here than handing out some contraceptions.

[cfimages]

Imagine. A 12 year old has a baby. Baby follows in it’s mothers footsteps and also has a baby at 12. You’ve now got a 24 year old woman who is a grandma.

Something needs to be done. Healthy sex-ed and not the abstinence only shit would probably make a world of difference.

When I was at school, we had sex-ed starting from about grade 3 or 4. I don’t remember any girls having babies while I was at school, although there was one who gave birth about 5 months after high school finished. She is now married to the guy and by all reports they are very happily married (which is surprising in itself) and have another child as well. And at 23, she went to uni as a mature-age student and is now a successful psychologist. Her hubby went from being a 19 year old dope smoking, high school dropout to a 38 year old owner of a building company.