Teen Sex: The Case for Norplant : Society should do more to discourage teen-age pregnancy. And unlike the alternatives, Norplant is reversible.

In many ways, the feminists have missed the boat on one of the most critical issues affecting young women, children and communities across this land. By emphasizing abortion to the exclusion of other issues, too many women’s organizations have neglected an equally important goal: working with young, sexually active women so that they do not get pregnant in the first place.

More and more babies are being born to mothers who are too young to drive, to vote or to drink alcoholic beverages. Yet we send these teen-agers home from hospitals with babies in their arms, and deem them “responsible” to raise those children. For many, we soon start sending welfare checks to support their babies. And now, we are recognizing that we need a new array of social services: parenting classes, nurseries in public high schools and on and on.

That has to change. Babies are entitled to be born to adults, and I have begun to question whether--even if her body function can make it happen--a young girl in our society should have the right to choose to become a mother at 14.

What can we do about it? I believe we need an aggressive social bias in favor of the use of the contraceptive Norplant for sexually active girls. With Norplant inserted under their skin in a simple procedure, those 13-year-olds will have five more years to become young women with a sense of the possibilities the world might have in store for them before confronting the responsibilities of motherhood.

There are those who might say that in selecting this option, we are encouraging promiscuity, that there might be negative side effects and that if a young woman uses Norplant, she might be less likely to insist on her partner’s use of a condom and therefore be at higher risk for AIDS.

First, on promiscuity. I come from the “virgin bride” tradition of courtship, where fear of pregnancy often set the parameters of sexual conduct. But I recognize that we cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Young teen-agers are having both sex and babies. We may not be able to stop them from having sex, but we can do a lot more to stop them from having babies resulting from those casual sexual contacts.

I believe we should also try to inculcate in young people a respect for themselves and their bodies, so that sexual contact is associated with deeply held feelings and promiscuity is reduced. But we cannot hold society hostage to that goal.

As for the second objection: Surely there are side effects in a 14-year-old having an abortion, becoming a mother or giving a child up for adoption. Norplant is reversible. Parenthood is not. I have talked with many women involved in public health in recent weeks and they believe that of the choices available now, Norplant is the most appropriate for sexually active young women.

As for AIDS, it would be tragic indeed if babies across America were born because girls were denied Norplant with the hope that fear of pregnancy might encourage greater use of condoms. Girls whose low self-esteem often contributes to casual sexual contact should not be put at risk of motherhood with the hope that their insistence on condoms will carry the day. Too many of them are not strong, and they will not insist. We need to expand AIDS education and the practice of “safe sex” and condom use. But that should be separate from a serious attempt to avert teen-age pregnancy. Each is a terrible problem with a different solution.

At a recent meeting on women’s issues at USC, I raised the question of whether we were ignoring the pervasive reality of teen-age motherhood. Cmdr. Helena Ashby of the Sheriff’s Department replied that she had volunteered at a community clinic and found that some of the babies who were being born to teen-age mothers had great-grandmothers in their late 40s. Clearly, some dramatic and aggressive social intervention is required.

Thus far, society seems to favor making it possible for young mothers to go on living “normal” lives. Last year, I visited a child-care center at Santa Monica High School, where the babies of 15-year-old mothers are cared for while their mothers work to get their high school diplomas. Laudable, I thought at the time. Now, I’m not sure that it is not being presented as too “normal.” Yes, I want these young mothers to have a chance to make it as responsible members of society, but I want them to be “rare birds.” I don’t want teen-agers to have babies. I want them to have the chance to go to high school, college or trade school, without society taking full responsibility and doing contortions to accommodate the consequences of their actions.

And I want the babies they will have some day to have intact, responsible, two-parent families, in which the parents feel a sense of their own possibilities and commit to having families as a choice, not an accident.

I was lucky. My two sons were born by choice to young, college-educated parents who felt the great weight of parenthood and the sacrifices and trade-offs it called for. My daughter, born later in my life, was received by loving parents who immediately began sacrificing to put money away for her college education, which would come at a time when they were close to collecting Social Security.

In the best of circumstances, parenting is hard and childhood is complicated. And society should use all its social, moral and scientific weight to prevent teen-age girls from getting pregnant.

President Clinton can give this a start by including in his health plan a strong bias in favor of using Norplant for sexually active teen-age girls. We shouldn’t rely on government-funded abortions. We want government to work aggressively to avert those pregnancies.