Dispatch From The Educational Front Line

Today, while subbing for a math teacher at the high school, I discovered that three more freshman girls are pregnant. These are not the same three girls I mentioned in an earlier post, but three different young ladies. If it's been a while since you were in school, remember that freshmen are usually 14 to 15 years old. That means there are six teenage mothers-to-be so far in one class who are going to have babies before they get their driver's license. And that doesn't count the older ones that have already had their babies or the ones that have already had abortions. Yep, heard about that today, too.

Just between us, I really don't think the whole "Purity" abstinence campaign that the Bush administration spent millions on is working. And evangelicals can preach until they're blue in the face that it does, but these girls are clearly not saying "no". It makes me want to take a basket of condoms and fling them around like pinata candy in every classroom I go into. And if we lived in a country that wasn't so hung up about the morality of teenage sex, instead of dealing with the reality of teenage sex, someone would be able to.

I know that reasons for modern teen pregnancy are far more complicated than just ignorance and/or lack of birth control, but at least it would be a start in the right direction of breaking the cycle.

I guess until we - as a society - can show these girls that they are worth something more and that having a baby at age 15 may not be the smartest move they make, this epidemic will just continue. And lest anyone think I am condemning them or dissing all single mothers, I am not at all. I simply feel compassion for them as a parent and as a woman; they have chosen a very hard road to go down and it takes major character and strength of will to get yourself and your child through it unscathed.