Time for your monthly Sarah-rant!

So, Marvin and I were packing up the last few things at our old apartment and cleaning it out on Sunday. I was looking through a couple of old newspapers that we had lying around for packing, and I stumbled on an article that just makes me seethe. There's a representative here in Colorado that's trying to change the commonly accpeted defintion of when pregnancy starts. It is commonly accpeted that pregnancy starts when a fertilized egg implants itself in the uterine lining. This lawmaker is trying to legally change it to state that pregnancy starts when an egg is fertilized. He's trying to do this to make birth control methods such as the plan B pill for emergency contraception and intrauterine devices (IUD's) illegal because they are abortive.

This drives me nuts for a couple of reasons. Number one, what on earth does a represntative from Colorado know about what's medically a pregnancy and what isn't? Number two, I honestly don't think that making MORE forms of contraception illegal is going to do this society any good.

This government's current policies on sex ed and contraception are just ass backwards. First off, they promote abstinence only sex ed in the schools which is a step backwards as far as I'm concerned. More and more parents are becoming less and less involved in their childrens' lives, so less and less children are learning about sex and what's right and wrong as far as sex goes from their parents. So, they go to school and inevitably learn about sex from their friends much sooner than the schools begin to teach sex ed. So these kids know all about their peers' views of sex, which I can guarentee is not abstinence only. And then, when the schools finally do catch up and teach the kids about sex, they don't include any information on condoms or the birth control pill, or any other kinds of birth control, because they're afraid that this will encourage kids to have sex. Instead they say "Just don't do it" (I think Nancy Regean's "just say no" campaign should have taught us better). So, these kids who already have it in their heads that they're going to do it because of what their peers have told them, have no idea how to access birth control and no one to talk to about it, because the policy in schools is to just tell them not to do it. Hence unwanted preganancies.

So, now these lawmakers are trying even harder to get more forms of contraception made illegal, so there are MORE unwanted pregnancies. I mean, if emergency contraception isn't available, how are women that have been raped going to deal with that? And I realize that IUD's aren't a very popular form of contraception, but I mean, it's better than nothing!

Anyways, so there's going to be all these unwanted pregnancies because, in part, of abstinence only sex ed, and the increasing difficulty in obtaining effective contraception. As a result, there are going to be a lot of unwanted children that have parents that aren't fit to parent. So, the ammount of kids in treatment centers like the one I work it will go up. And of course, they are governmentally funded, and the government (who is partly responsible for this mess) doesn't like to fund treatment centers like the one I work it. It just doesn't make any sense and it's not fair.

And just to clarify, I'm not saying that unwanted pregnancies are solely the result of bad governmental policies. I'm not taking away the individual's responsibility to make smart decisions about sex and pregnancy etc. I just understand that teenagers, unless they are supplied with all the information, will end up making stupid decisions about things because they haven't been well informed. How are they expected to make smart decisions about sex when they're not even supplied with all the options and alternatives? This "stick-your-head-in-the-sand" stance about sex ed just doesn't work.