Leonard Pitts Jr.: Abstinence-Only Policy Is Bearing Fruit

[marmar]

via CommonDreams:



Published on Wednesday, June 25, 2008 by The Miami Herald
Abstinence-Only Policy Is Bearing Fruit
by Leonard Pitts Jr.



So all we know for sure is that something happened in Gloucester, Mass.

What that something was depends on whom you believe. Last week on its website, Time magazine quoted Gloucester High Principal Dr. Joseph Sullivan as saying that, of 17 girls who became pregnant during the school year, nearly half did so as part of a ”pact” to have and raise their babies together. Sue Todd, president of a group that runs a day-care at the school, told Time she had heard a similar story from a social worker.

Officials reportedly became suspicious when an unusually high number of girls began showing up at the school clinic for pregnancy tests. Many who tested negative seemed crushed at the news. Those whose pregnancies were confirmed celebrated with high fives.

But on Monday, Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk and school Superintendent Christopher Farmer held a news conference to deny the supposed pact, saying there is no evidence any such agreement was ever made. Sullivan, according to Kirk, was “foggy in his memory.”

The principal was not at the meeting to answer for his allegedly faulty memory — Kirk said she was not ”comfortable” having him there — and has declined comment about the matter since the Time report, as has Sue Todd.

Frankly, it sounds as if the mayor and the schools chief, faced with embarrassing international attention, are trying to cover their municipal backside by silencing and undermining the principal and the child-care provider; it’s hard to believe Kirk and Farmer would know more about what was going on in Joseph Sullivan’s school than Joseph Sullivan did. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/25/9877/

[Wiley50]

1. i thought the whole point of abstinance only was not "bearing fruit" so to speak n/t

[NightWatcher]

2. put a condom on that banana and it will stop bearing more fruit

[ensho]

3. isn't that area very religious?

nt

[noonwitch]

4. These girls knew exactly what they were doing

This is not a matter of sex education vs abstinence education.

[greenvpi]

5. I don't think you can blame the teachers for this one.

The girls would have done whatever they wanted with or without the teacher's explaining the consequences.

As to abstinence-only education, it worked very well when I was in high school. I hate to admit that, but it did. I didn't know of anyone that was having sex in high school. They showed us pictures of diseased sexual organs, c-section scars, women's stomachs after giving birth, and talked about AIDS. AIDS had just been renamed from GRIDS(Gay-related immune deficiency) at that time so very little was known about it except that it killed. All of it was very scary.

[pansypoo53219]

6. the interview on NPR said

they don't do abstinence only, but seems their attempts to fully informing the teens is way off 2, talking to some who engaged in sex said they used condoms sometimes, BUT DIDN'T KNOW WHAY THEY WERE USING THEM. sounds lik horrid sex ed period. maybe a condom on a nanner is part of the problem.