Ok, so being a parent today is hard. You try to instill values in your children and hope those life lessons stick, and they make good choices.
But it seems as though the Department of Education (DOE) knows better.
Thanks to its CATCH (Connecting Adolescents to Comprehensive Health) pilot program, girls as young as 14 can now get Plan B emergency contraception (also known as “the morning after pill”) at 13 city schools.
Parents don’t even have to know about it.
The extent of a parent’s knowledge, thanks to the DOE, is the ability to opt out of the program. They are given a form, and if they don’t check off a box telling the school not to distribute, the girl can get the pill without her parents even knowing.
We think the idea is preposterous.
City stats point out that 7,000 girls get pregnant by the time they are 17. And though this number is staggering, the DOE is going about solving the problem the wrong way.
Giving out condoms is one thing, since they are effective not only in preventing pregnancy, but in halting the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), but making Plan B available is like gathering firewood – and lighting a match.
The morning after pill does not protect against STDs, and our fear is that these girls – who, for all intents and purposes are still just children – will use it as a method of contraception, not as a last resort.
Our heads are not in the sand, we get it – kids in 2012 are, unfortunately, sexually active at a very young age. But condoning it, as the DOE is, is a recipe for disaster.
