Birth Control Advice in the High Schools

Of course birth control should be easily available in high schools. I thank Ellen Goodman for her column (March 11), “Sex and the Single Teen-Ager.”

Goodman clearly describes the necessity for such programs by stating the alarming numbers of pregnancies occurring at Du Sable High School in Chicago each year. The principal of Du Sable commented, “People who left school 30 or 40 years ago would be shocked.”

She is right, times have changed. Not long ago I graduated from a Chicago South Side high school. There was a drastic difference between my adolescence and that of my mother. When my mother was a teen-ager in the late 1940s, girls were suppose to remain virgins until marriage. That was the cultural rule.

Those who lost their virginity too soon were often labeled sleazy or sluts. Well now the labeling is on the other foot. When I went to high school you were suppose to lose your virginity as soon as possible. Those who were still a virgin at 17 or 18 were labeled square or unsophisticated.

Peer pressure in reference to drugs and alcohol is commonplace. Now peer pressure is associated with sexual activity. It is hard enough to teach a child to say no when all his friends smoke pot. To teach a teen-age girl to say no to the pressure to engage in sexual activity is much harder.

Sex has become accepted by the media to the point of promotion. The results of these new attitudes toward sex are the numerous unwanted pregnancies and abortions. I am glad Du Sable has a birth control program. I only wish other high schools will follow Du Sable’s wise example.

JULIA E. RADER

Pasadena