Today, Free Birth Control; Tomorrow; Free Abortions?

In a recent MSNBC.com article, a Maine middle school will now be giving birth control pills to middle-school students confidentially, that is, without their parents finding out. This is in addition to the condom distribution already happening there. Am I crazy, or does the fact that middle schools are giving birth control pills to girls as young as 11 years old just, as one radio talk show host says, "make blood shoot out of your eyes"?

What's next, adding abortion clinics onto the nurse's office at school? This goes back to an earlier post I made regarding condom distribution in schools. If condom distribution was to help curb disease, what is giving birth control good for? It does nothing to stop STDs. One way to look at this is to see that schools like this are removing excuses for "just being a kid" and are in fact encouraging promiscuity by making it easier to fix any potential problems. If we adopt their line of thinking, we should:

• distribute bongs, pipes, and Visine at school because "they're gonna smoke weed anyway"
• or better yet, set up a safe place to deal drugs so they won't have to go to skanky neighborhoods or dangerous meeting places
• teach students the proper use of a beer bong and distribute aspirin and Alka Seltzer on Mondays to hungover students because "they're gonna drink anyway"
• host "safe drinking nights" for teens at the school so the kids can "be safe" In fact, why not just cancel Homecoming and Prom and go straight to giving the kids the alcohol and private bedrooms they desire (equipped with condoms and birth control pills, of course) because that's what they're going to do anyway.
• give away clean hypodermic needles so at least the student junkies won't get AIDS or hepatitis from dirty needles because (you guessed it) "they're gonna shoot up anyway"

As others have also brought up, why not give the kids trans fats (they're gonna eat them anyway), caffeinated soft drinks, and other things the kids want? Oh yeah, BECAUSE IT'S BAD FOR THEM. Also, because THEY'RE ELEVEN!!! They are too young to be trusted with a lot of personal decisions because their brains are still developing and they cannot properly and rationally think through complicated issues like sexuality.

This is what happens when "what's true/right for you may not be true/right for me." This is the bastard child of Tolerance and Don't Judge Me.

It used to be that there was this place kids could go to learn about how to live life responsibly, be polite to adults, clean their rooms, and learn about the birds and the bees, a little place called "home." Now, we trust the American school system (which ranks near the bottom of school system effectiveness) to do this for us? [Shiver runs up spine]

I think that people whose Christmas wish lists are headlined by XBoxes and stuff from Berkley Girl should not be allowed to have sex at all, let alone be trusted to "come to their own conclusions" about it.