Outrage: Bureaucrats Taking Control of Children's Health Care
I guess parents aren't for raising kids anymore, just housing them. A Maine school wants authority to issue contraceptives to 11 year-olds without parental notification. From the story:
Students who have parental permission to be treated at King Middle School's health center would be able to get birth control prescriptions under a proposal that the Portland School Committee will consider Wednesday.
The proposal would build on the King Student Health Center's practice of providing condoms as part of its reproductive health program since it opened in 2000, said Lisa Belanger, a nurse practitioner who oversees the city's student health centers...Although students must have written parental permission to be treated at Portland's school-based health centers, state law allows them to seek confidential health care and to decide whether to inform their parents about the services they receive, Belanger said.
The other day, I reported a story about pediatricians probing into private issues of family life without cause of any abuse or wrongdoing. Now, we see the increase in the powers of health bureaucrats to make crucial medical decisions in place of parents. Strangers are making these decisions based on what they consider in children's best interests rather than what parents believe, and are deciding health issues based on their morality rather than the parents' morality.
How did we let these people become so powerful that they rule over parents about children? Why did parents get so meek?
Labels: Children's Health Care
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:25 AM
10 Comments
10 Comments:
What exactly bothers you about this?
That parents have been taken from the discussion?
Or that it involves 11 year olds? Would you feel different if the "child" were older? say 15 or 17?
If that were the case, then it's all a race to when "sexual independence" begins.
For that answer, I think reasonable people will disagree, and if a republican form of government (the laboratory of democracy version, not the political party) means anything, then different communities will have ideas on when sexual independence begins.
Yes. Parents have a right to know what is happening with their children's bodies and lives. Children are not little adults.
Yes and no. 15 should still involve parents. Less sure about 17, but I don't see why any minor should be able to have treatment without parental knowledge absent legitimate concerns about abuse. And then, the court should be the decider, not bureaucrats or health providers.
This isn't about sex. It is about parental authority over their children.
Planned Parenthood does this all the time. They have kids pass out condoms looking like lolipops at high schools in our area. If Planned Parenthood can do it, I'm shocked that this would be a big deal. I absolutely oppose it. Parents can't be responsible if they don't have authority. And with all the sexual predators out there preying on teen and preteen girls, this is a policy born of lunacy. Maybe there are good people behind it, but it's ridiculous.
And besides what are schools doing getting involved in this? Kids can't read their diplomas but they know how to use condoms. O well... Our tax dollars at work.
One form of cancer can be sexually transmitted to girls and women, and cancer can go for years undetected, especially since most girls age fifteen or younger don't get PAP smears done. Likewise, other STDs don't always rear their ugly heads until well after the child has been infected, and even with condom use, there's still a chance of kids getting sick. It's called "safer" sex these days because it's not 100% effective. Of *course* parents of minor children should be in the know, because they need to know that the kids need to get regular check-ups if they're going to be sexually active, as that's their responsibility. If I sit down and teach my kids my moral values and explain why they're in place, and why I have certain rules, then I can't be undermined by an authority figure that's encouraging something I don't believe in, or else how can I parent?
This isn't just about birth control. It's about how a parent can be responsible for teaching her kids right from wrong when someone else says, "What your mother thinks is wrong doesn't matter. Do what you want to."
After all, if I'm unreliable about sex education (I explain why he should wait and his clinic hands him free condoms so he doesn't have to) then what about other issues, like staying in school and getting a good education, or stealing, or anything else?
Parents and kids have to trust each other. I have to respect my child in his role as a child, and he has to respect me in my role as a parent. This kind of thing breaks up the trust between parent and child. When that happens, you get arguments, rebellion, anger, and frustration, and communication goes out the window.
This isn't about it being eleven-year-olds, Royale. It's about how this clinic is stepping in and setting an early mistrust up in young kids' minds and interfering with the parent-child dynamic. Well, in a sense I guess it is about them being eleven, because the younger kids are when the dynamic is messed up, the harder it is for parents and kids to work together as they get older. A fifteen year old has a better chance of working through rebellion if the relationship has been good up to that point, and a seventeen year old is old enough to have more responsibility, thus making them more aware of their parents' duties and making them more sympathetic.
Or anyway, that's how it went with me as a kid with my folks. I don't see why anybody has to screw with that.
What's most shocking to me about this is that anyone would consider prescribing hormonal contraceptives to girls who haven't even been menstruating long enough to have regular cycles, or recognize if they experienced adverse side effects! And who knows what long term effects that could have? It is outright abuse to perpetrate such a thing on a minor without their parent's knowledge or consent. And it is ridiculous to think that a 12 year old is going to have any idea what she's consenting to.
Parents need to know when their daughter is on a prescription medication that can adversely react to other medications and other factors (like blood thinners, or cigarettes). In addition, will these girls take the trouble to stay aware of the way drugs for migraines, seizures, and some antibiotics can reduce the effectiveness of the BCP, leaving them open to experience the consequences of their school-endorsed sexual behaviour.
BCPs can also leave these girls, already at an age where emotions are fragile, open to an increased risk of depression (possibly because it reduces absorption of b-vitamins).
But, of course, if the parents don't know their daughter has been prescribed BCPs, then they have no way of watching for adverse effects or avoiding contraindicated drugs.
I mean, this is just stupid!
At middle school age, any girl having sex is statuatory rape. If she asks for the pill, someone needs to look into it.
I would prescribe birthcontrol to a 14 year old with mom's permission only.
Some of these girls are neglected or abused (often druggie parents) and have sex with other teens to feel loved. Counseling helps. If their "boyfriend" is older (a predator), I call the cops.
The Pill? No...younger girls often "forget" to take the pill...Usually we use the patch or Depo Provera...easier to remember, although more side effects.
For a 15 year old, I would counsel first before deciding to tell the parents. Usually I do.
Sixteen and up, with a steady boyfriend, it's her business...heck, in my day a lot of my friends got married at 16.
boinky -
In some areas 16 is still acceptable marriage age, and sometimes that still works out, but in your day there wasn't a social pressure to have "open" or loosly binding relationships, and people didn't dive in and out as readily (I'm assuming you're about my mother's age, 50, since I'm 30 and at no time when I was growing up was 16 anywhere near normal for marriage in any heavily populated area).
And how do you define "steady boyfriend" at that age? Even when I was 16, I remember girls in my counseling group having breakdowns becuase their "steady boyfriends" were sleeping with one or two other girls, who were also his "steady girlfriends." If a young person has a committed family that is willing to back him up and help him be responsible, then I'm positive a 16-year-old boy can get married and have a produtive, happy, and fun marriage that will last for years, but most people these days live in nuclear homes without a lot of parental involvement (mom and dad both work outside the home and aren't there constantly, and they may have divorced at some point themselves), and a boy is most likely going to say what boys were saying a billion years ago when I was in high school - "I just wanna have fun, not be *married* to her! Why's that such a big deal?"
Once you hit 18 (or 21, depending on how you look at it) the US government recognizes you as an adult, and pretty much from that moment on a parent only has say in the child's life if the folks and the kid have a respectful relationship - otherwise, the kid is free to leave home and do whatever. It sucks but it's the law.
But under 18 a parent has to be responsible for his kids. And having known a number of girls who got pregnant in high school (and bragged about it - the number was seven), I know that it's not just neglected or abused kids that run around having sex - it's middle-class kids with intact homes as well. So it can't be excused that way (Mom and dad aren't going to be responsible, so we have to step in and take over for them and protect the kids ourselves). Because sometimes it's just the girls thinking they have what they want, instead of recognizing infatuation and putting things in perspective.
There is a VERY good chance girls 11 or 12 years of age who are "sexually active" have been sexually abused by an older man.
I can't believe we are actually condoning this.
Sixteen is not 11 or 12, by the way.
Have you ever heard of "age of consent" laws? Eleven or twelve is almost ALWAYS below the legal age of consent.
That's because (as science has shown) the human brain is still developing at 11 or 12 and the child doesn't have mental ability to make a choice, such as to have sex. And you're right, most children that young are being molested if they're sexually active, but even if they're not, someone is taking advantage of them, even if they're willing participants.
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