A Red State's "Respect"(?!?!) For Life

This simply is inexcusable in a 21rst Century industrialized Society.

According to the Canton Health Department, statistics through July show that 104 of the 586 babies born to Canton residents in Aultman Hospital and Mercy Medical Center had mothers between 11 and 19. (emphasis mine)
I wonder how many of these new moms were taught birth control by people whom they had any reason to trust or respect...

Comments

  1. How many of them were under 15? How many came from fundy families? How many, esp. of the younger ones, were impregnated by family members? (Very young ones often are.)

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  2. To me, this is one of the areas where religion does harm. Many believers accept the premise that whatever the church says is guided by the Holy Spirit - because the church says so. So it's the "Holy Spirit" that's against birth control, not a bunch of people with a particular and to my mind quite peculiar reading of scripture who decide stuff like this at meetings that I have to assume are uninspired.

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  3. Hi Michael,

    I would bet that none of the 65 were taught about birth control. And Jay has a very good point about young girls being impregnated by family members.

    To respond to rockstar, what is happening in Canton is representative of what is happening throughout the U.S. and Canada.

    By age 18, one in four teenaged girls in the U.S. will have experienced a pregnancy.

    Although it is not inevitable, the daughters of teen mothers are likely to become pregnant as teens. It is estimated that as high as 75% of pregnant teens had mothers who were also pregnant while as an adolescent.

    In Canada, it is estimated that 50% of 15 to 19-year-olds are having sexual intercourse and that only 29.8% of those who are sexually active use any kind of contraception – including condoms.

    I agree it is the result of religious doctrine based upon the idea that sex is bad. Coupled with denial of the immense power of one of the most fundamental human urges we have, the need to mate, an impossible situation is created, especially given that our culture extoles and flaunts sex at every turn.

    There most certainly is a correlation between exposure to sexual content via television and sexual attitudes and behaviours.

    To keep quiet and not teach our children about STD's and contraception paves the way for tragedy.

    Not educating the young and giving them the tools to prevent that tragedy is irresponsibile and counter to true morality, which requires us to look after each other not out of judgment, but out of love.

    Sex is sacred and necessary to being fully human. We need an entirely different approach to sex so that intimacy occuppies a healthy place at the right time and under the right circumstances in each person's life.

    Visit my site, Prayerforce.org where I urge love, not judgment.

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