No More Bin Laden

[kandrathe]

The majority of people that are interested in ending abortion are not the same people interested in promoting contraception. The majority of people interested in ending abortion are also not the same people interested in having anything whatsoever to do with a young girl having unprotected sex out of wedlock. There is no magical middle happyland. It's either "NO ABORTION! NO CONTRACEPTIVES! NO SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE!" or nothing. You might be able to be reasonable about it, but the VAST majority of anti-abortionists cannot.

I don't have the ready statistics to prove or deny your impressions. You are correct that there are some very traditional and conservative people who believe that abstinence is the only way to avoid pregnancy. They also believe that sexual relations outside of marriage is wrong, and would bring back the stocks, and public whipping if they could. But, I would say that given a comprehensive plan to attempt to end or minimize abortions would still please that hard core conservative minority, as long as you weren't insisting on giving explicit sex education to their kindergartner.

So we are still left with the issue of poor, scared, young, undereducated girls getting pregnant.

I think we know of those things in our society that influence sexual promiscuity.

Foremost, and this is backed up by studies by the NIH, it is a healthy communicative relationship between the young persons parents and the young person. Beyond the mechanics of how to get a condom on a banana, parents demonstrate healthy gender relationships. The more open and honest the parent-child relationship is, the less likely an unwanted pregnancy is to occur. The goal should be to arm families with what is needed to encourage pregnancy prevention, and for conservative families they can attempt to prevent intercourse prevention if they like as long as their children also know about birth control options.

Then, I believe it involves holding both the young girl, and the male involved appropriately responsible for their choices. Our society is rife with blaming others for our own mistakes, and on all levels its killing us. Here is where the big societal shift needs to occur. Our tradition is the scarlet letter, and shame. Beyond the responsibility of carrying a child to term, it is the shame of having everyone know what you did, and that you were irresponsible. The typical response is for people to try to hide or run away from their shame. We need to take the shame away, and provide all the services to allow the pregnant girl(/couple) to bring the child to term, then keep it, or give it up for adoption.

Lastly, we need to hold media more accountable for the image of youth they are shoveling into our culture. It makes for good drama and soap opera, but far too often we are finding that their fantasy has become our reality. Somehow it has become square to show healthy people living healthy lives.