Birth Control Aid in Schools
To paraphrase the recent hit song, “Let’s Hear It for the Girls.” Three cheers for school board members Jackie Goldberg and Roberta Weintraub and their supporters for pushing ahead the idea of an on-campus health clinics that include birth control information and supplies.
It is my firm belief that every child born should be a wanted child, but I also believe that abortion is killing and should only be used as a last resort in cases of rape, incest or when needed to save the life of the mother. How do I reconcile and act on my beliefs? By supporting programs like on-campus clinics, by educating my children in the morality as well as the mechanics of sex, and by opposing abortion as a convenient means of birth control.
While I do not subscribe to the “marry or burn” school of morality, neither do I approve of the “let’s get it on” philosophy nor condone the “my body is my own so mind your own business” school of defiance, either. I shall teach my children about sexual mechanics and morality, thank you, but if for some reason I could not (or would not), I would ultimately be grateful for an on-campus health clinic provided that education is dispensed with whatever supplies--be they aspirin, antibiotics or birth control pills.
I have but one reservation: before any medication is dispensed to any minor, please devise a solid system to protect against preventable side effects. My reservations stem from allergies, known and unknown, on both sides of the family. If a medication causes anaphylactic shock or an IUD causes severe bleeding or PID, pelvic inflammatory disease, (I know of this from my Dalkon Shield days), how am I to know what care my child needs if I don’t know what’s in his or her body?
Who picks up the financial and emotional tab of a daughter made sterile by PID when mom and dad didn’t know she had an IUD or a diaphragm? Who consoles the parents whose son succumbs to penicillin-induced anaphylaxis when those parents didn’t even know he’d had sex, much less VD?
I realize that some parents would make life hell for a child using birth control, but I believe that the privacy of the child can be protected by the use of a comprehensive family medical history questionnaire and a general parent consent form. In the case of an emergency, a system must be in force so that the family- or emergency-room physician can get information in a way that protects the privacy of the child. That way parents have a chance to give needed information and high-schoolers learn that their privacy as well as their lives and futures can be protected and respected.
Go for it, ladies. You have a lot of support--’I hope it’s enough.
CATHY M. WATTERS
Alta Loma
