24 June 2008

I Promise to Ruin My Life and That of My Baby

Typically the term 'pact' when applied to high schoolers references some sort of suicide pact - at least in my mind. Let's all promise to kill ourselves at midnight on the 20th by drowning ourselves in the kitchen sink. Perhaps the word 'pact' could be referring to a promise to lose virginity on prom night or to never tell some secret or to always stay friends no matter what and so on and so forth.

High schoolers, however, have come up with a new pact: a pregnancy pact. For some reason, this is more disturbing to me than any of the above, including the kitchen sink fiasco. A bunch of girls deciding to get pregnant before they even have driver's licenses has to be the most idiotic idea I've heard in quite some time. And I'm having tremendous difficulty comprehending a motive. It has been suggested that these girls were looking for love. What happened to the old fashioned way of looking for love (in all the wrong places)? You know, indiscriminate and yet well protected sex.

On a side note to this: I've noticed that the articles and news programs describing this pregnancy pact has a lovely list of people and things to blame: the economy, sex ed classes, the principal, free day care, and so on. But two people are missing from this list of shame: the oddly absent parents for one and the idiotic school girls for another. Let's place blame where it belongs, directly on the girls and their parents.

Oh, and is anyone talking to the boys who got these girls pregnant? Let's not forget them; after all, they were perfectly willing to have unprotected sex. What sort of responsibility is being placed on them?

And finally, the parents and community are currently in an uproar over a school suggestion to start handing out contraceptives. Uh huh.

1 comment:

  1. My thoughts exactly, Trisha. How is it the school's fault?! Did they have sex at school? I don't think so. And, yes, once again, the boys are not part of the equation.

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