Tue Oct 10 01:56:59 EDT 2017
I'm listening to a story on the radio about Trump wanting to cut support and education efforts to reduce teen pregnancy. Ignoring whether this is a good idea or good policy, I heard this statement:For Hispanic girls, one in three will get pregnant before they turn 20.
There is no question of the gender of people who get pregnant. There is no reason to use "they".
To more troubling matters, the news story shows that many teens do not understand the relationship between sex and pregnancy. This seems hard to believe, with the ready availability of so much information about so many subjects on the Internet. But there's a lot of things families don't talk about about. And there's a lot of things schools don't talk about, when that's the community preference. (Yes, blanket ignorance is the choice of many communities.) And people believe whatever they want to believe, which is easier when they can prevent any conflicting "facts" from intruding into their lives.
And many of the girls (and boys) who do know that intercourse is the cause of pregnancy also believe absolute rubbish about non-standard contraceptive approaches (can't get pregnant the first time; pulling out "early";
Mountain Dew douche).
We hear so many complaints about how poor a job our schools do. Denying kids information that will really affect their life is not what we should be doing. It's hard to overestimate the consequences of dropping out of high school to raise a child. What is your earning potential without a high-school diploma? Can you even make enough to afford day care so you can work?
If the right wing really wants to prevent abortions, the better, kinder approach is preventing pregnancies, not outlawing abortions. It's hard to see how leaving the kids ignorant will help there.
Wednesday 00:06
There was just a story on the radio about access to abortions for pregnant, underage, unaccompanied illegal immigrants. The people who want to deny this access because "Abortion!" are the same people who are going to be flummoxed by anchor babies. They can't force the deportation of the US-citizen babies. And they can't argue that a baby is better off without it's deported mother.
Were these girls pregnant when they left home, or were they exploited along the way? (Or did they not even know what they were doing - like too many American girls?)
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