Mandatory Contraceptives?
Hello all,
I am up late and I have this knawing thought in my mind and I just can’t seem to swing it. So I am now writing my thoughts down so that hopefully I can get some sleep. I was having a lengthy discussion this evening with a lady and she and I both are PRO LIFE when it comes to abortion. Well that is what our topic was. So the more she and I discussed it and how, from what I inderstand, feminist have the stance that it should be a choice of the said pregnant mother whether or not to abort the child that she is carrying. So the more I thought about it I began to come up with some ideas that I thought I would share with you. How about instead of worrying so much about what to do after you get pregnant, why not start before you get pregnant. So I came up with this. I think that starting in the 8th grade, that is should be MANDATORY STATE ISSUED that all girls should receive an IUD. I know that there are people out there who would beg to differ and say that you can’t do that because it will only encourage the kids to have more sex. We can either pretend that kids aren’t having sex or we can go by what we know which is that whether they are safe from pregnancy or not at least that would have more of a chance of not getting pregnant. The biggest issue that I believe we are being faced with is that these Kids are having Kids. They drop out of school and before you know have a very small future ahead of them. The majority of these girls would probably not drop out if they just weren’t getting pregnant. What do you think….Mandatory contraceptives? I say IUD because they have the least side effects and are rated to be the best. 99.9% effective. By the way I have one, and I LOVE it!
Cari B.
“Everything happens for a reason.”
Laura Knudson said,
September 14, 2007 at 6:35 pm
One of the problems with having other people involved in very personal decisions (like types of birth control used, for instance) is that so many things get left out of the equation. For instance, many women of color are still involuntarily sterilized today – our society feels that there are some people who just should not reproduce (i.e., eugenics). My stepdaughter was saying that she felt it would be a good idea to have the government take everyone’s DNA and fingerprints at birth, so that they could more readily solve crimes. On the face of things, that seems like an inarguably sound position. Who would argue that a database of this sort, used to solve crimes, could be bad? Unfortunately, we don’t apply rules evenly across the board (as I explained to her) and not everyone would be treated fairly. Allowing others any control over our bodies (whether through DNA samples or through mandatory birth control) is a recipe for disaster, racism, sexism, and all sorts of other issues.
We have a chapter coming up on women’s health issues, and I’m sure we will get into topics like this then.
Keep up the thinking and writing!