@highmusic: ""The handwriting on the wall"..."take" number one zillion!
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PORTLAND, Maine - Pupils at a city middle school will be able to get
birth control pills and patches at their student health center after
the local school board approved the proposal Wednesday evening.
The plan, offered by city health officials, makes King Middle School
the first middle school in Maine to make a full range of contraception
available to students in grades 6 through 8, according to the state
Department of Health and Human Services.
There are no national figures on how many middle schools, where most
students range in age from 11 to 13, provide such services.
"It's very rare that middle schools do this," said Divya Mohan, a
spokeswoman for the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care.
The Portland School Committee voted 7-2 for the measure.
Chairman John Coyne voted against it, saying he felt providing the
birth control was a parental responsibility. The other no vote came
from Ben Meiklejohn, who said the consent form does not clearly define
the services being offered.
Opponents cited religious and health objections.
Diane Miller said she felt the plan was against religion and against
God. Another opponent, Peter Doyle, said he felt it violated the
rights of parents and puts students at risk of cancer because of
hormones in the pill.
A supporter, Richard Verrier, said 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.
Condoms have been available since 2000 to King students who have
parental permission to be treated at its student health center.
About one-fourth of student health centers that serve at least one
grade of adolescents 11 and older dispense some form of contraception,
said Mohan, whose Washington-based organization represents more than
1,700 school-based centers nationwide.
At King Middle School, birth control prescriptions will be given after
a student undergoes a physical exam by a physician or nurse
practitioner, said Lisa Belanger, who oversees Portland's student
health centers.
Students treated at the centers must first get written parental
permission, but under state law such treatment is confidential, and
students decide for themselves whether to tell their parents about the
services they receive.
Five of the 134 students who visited King's health center during the
2006-07 school year reported having sexual intercourse, said Amanda
Rowe, lead nurse in Portland's school health centers.
A high school in Topeka, Kan., stopped providing free condoms to
students Wednesday after district officials learned of the month-old
program. The district has a policy against providing contraceptives.
BTW, what DID "the handwriting on the wall" REALLY mean?
Good answer here 
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    @cartercc: "<quote>
My wife started teaching at a junior high in 1972. She taught special
education in a working class section of town. Being in the Deep South,
this would be mostly textile mills. One time her students were working
on individual projects, and she was monitoring them and talking to a
teacher from an adjoining room. He said to her, 'Bonnie, do you
realize that you are the only female in this room who is not
pregnant?'
If you look at the data, the age of mothers on first births have
actually risen during the last century. 100 years ago, the average age
of first birth was in the early teens. Today, it's much higher. I
don't know if it's in the twenties, but many women are postponing
having children until they are older. The age of first birth is at a
historical high.
Of course, one big difference is that the young mothers 100 years ago
tended to be married, and now they don't.
300 years ago, in Puritan New England, I understand that couples did
not marry until pregnancy, and the fact that the bride-to-be was also
a mother-to-be didn't raise any eyebrows. I suppose about 95% of us
engage in sex with a person to whom we aren't married at the time, me
included. Hey, sex happens!
For what it's worth, giving birth control pills to students sends the
wrong message, however well intentioned and utile. I agree that birth
control pills might be a useful tool to address some specific
problems, and one problem might be teen pregnancy. However, we still
need to take a strong moral stand in favor of abstainence. I don't
know how you would do this as a practical matter, but I think you've
got to try. It's ludicrous to hand out birth control pills while
saying, 'Here are the pills, don't have sex.' It's a hard question and
I don't have an answer. Ideally we would teach our children to delay
sexual activity until marriage, but we have to face the reality that
it won't happen.
CC"
    @highmusic: "CCC, for once we're pretty much "right down the middle" in our
agreement on this issue. I hope you checked out the discussions at the
link I provided. Very interesting and very provocative "real world"
experiences on the subject are presented there  mostly from women,
who are (obviously) the main victims of early-teen sexual adventures.
Some off-the-cuff comments:
1. At the very least, making condoms available for free at school is a
concession which can't possibly do any harm. It can only help to
mitigate catastrophic life-damaging harm. Kids don't need "adult
permission" to have sex. If they want to do it, they're going to do
it, and nobody can stop them. They'll find a way. Trust me.
2. Teenagers are intolerably horny. This is a basic fact of life.
Being real about this fact, and giving kids official permission for
"creative and satisfying masturbation" can only help to mitigate
unwanted pregnancies. It can't possibly do any more harm than is
already being done by reckless unprotected heterosexual intercourse.
3. I think the entire human reproductive "technology" on this planet
is increasingly dysfunctional  like most other aspects of life on
this planet. My spiritual attunement and intuition tell me that,
eventually  maybe a few hundred years from now  physical vehicles
(bodies) will be created very consciously and purposefully and
responsibly. Indeed, this was once true on the planet. It is no longer
true. We've lost our way, and are about to lose the whole ball game,
short of some direct divine intervention into the human world. Both
the Buddhists and the Christians have predicted a "Second Coming' of a
divinely-illuminated Cosmic Master. Stay tuned, and hope for the best."
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