Teach them before their hormones rage

THE EDITOR: I have read and listened intently to both sides of the abortion debate and I would like to express my thoughts on this. Both sides agree on one thing, that is, that the number of illegal abortions in this country is too high. ASPIRE believes that legislation can be designed to reduce the number of these illegal abortions, and the pro-life group offers mostly religious dogma for their arguments. I wish that both sides would think rationally, and not emotionally. I can agree with the pro-life in that a foetus will develop into a human being, means that a scheduled abortion is like murdering an individual who has a right to life. Regardless of the stage of the foetus, it is a developing human being. However, something has to change. The country’s collective policy about sex seems to be one in which we all bury our heads in the sand and hope our children can cope with the peer pressure, the sexual connotations in the media, and their ranging hormones without our help. If we stop hiding the fact that sex happens, whether we approve or not, then maybe we can come up with a rational approach to a spreading problem.

To ASPIRE- I don’t believe that legalising abortions will decrease the number of abortions in this country. Of course it will decrease the number of illegal abortions, as they will now be legalised. Giving consideration only to rape cases, or deformed foetuses, won’t stop the abortions. They will continue. I don’t believe that we have the right to say that any potential human being does not have the right to life, no one has that right; not even the mother. Unfortunately, we are lacking support agencies to give individuals other options. How many children have been adopted in the last year? How many of those were disabled? What policy does this country have for the disabled? It is still being drafted. The only way to reduce the number of abortions is to have sex education in schools from as young as ten years old. Children have to realise what is going to happen to them, before it happens, before puberty has been reached, before they are teenagers and start looking at adults as the “people who want to stop them from having fun.” In this day and age, they have been exposed enough at that age to understand, and they must be taught the implications of their actions.

Some groups choose to ignore reality and push “abstinence.” We have news for you, some of those youths that have pledged abstinence are sexually active. Some of those youths singing, “The only safe sex is marital sex” are also sexually active. The country’s youth are laughing at us adults because they know this. This discredits the message. Beside marital sex cannot be completely safe, since you never know where the other person has been either. There are other problems to think of beside getting pregnant! Teach the children; educate them, that is the only way they can make an informed choice. Teach them before the hormones start to rage so that they understand what is happening to them while it is taking place. Do it early, before they get into trouble. Legalising abortion will only put the proverbial plaster on a festering wound. Religious preaching has never stopped the problem, nor will it ever. Teach your daughters and sons to protect themselves. We are not willing as a country to get to the root of any problem and fix it once and for all. We patch, patch, patch and when everything falls apart, blame the previous administration. In the future, we will be blamed for not making the right decisions. We should do that now.

SAMANTHA ROCHARD
St Clair