It is possible to understand the anti-abortion movement, even if you do not necessarily agree with it. Whether it is religious investment in the value of the human embryo or a belief in the sacred nature of the human body, pro-life advocates have an ideology that coherently fits together. What's hard to understand is how this ideology is taken up by some legislators and yet makes no sense when put into legislation. Taking legislative action that may increase the number of pregnant teenagers seems to run in direct opposition to the goals of those who subscribe to the ideology of the abortion-rights movement.
A proposal in the state Legislature, Senate Bill 552, would prevent underage women from seeking confidential contraceptive services through the Family Planning Waiver. The FPW is a state program that guarantees basic reproductive health services, including contraception, to low-income women age 15 to 44 in a confidential atmosphere.
Essentially, if the bill were passed, minors seeking contraceptive or other family planning services could not do so without the consent of their parents. In coverage of the proposed bill in The Badger Herald, state Rep. Mark Gundrum, R-New Berlin, the primary sponsor of the bill, remarked, 'If you believe strangers out there ... should be able to be prescribing and giving out medication to minor girls, then you're not going to be in favor of this legislation.'
Gundrum is oversimplifying the issue and ignoring the broader flaw in the logic behind the bill: High school teens are going to have sex and will have no desire to talk about it.
The pact between best friends to lose their virginity before they get their high school diploma is a staple of the teen sex romp on the silver screen, from 'American Pie' to 'Porky's.' A viewing of 'Porky's' may not be a sturdy measure of real high school copulation, but the numbers do not lie. According to a 2003 study conducted for Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 47 percent of high school students have had sexual intercourse. Moreover, 14 percent of high school students had four or more sex partners during their lifetime, and 37 percent of sexually-active high school students did not use a condom during their last sexual intercourse.
These statistics show that the lack of education these adolescents have on safe sex is serious. If these kids are not using a basic contraceptive, such as a condom, what will happen when ready access to other forms of contraception is cut off? Without the proper education or resources, teens may follow their eager impulses down roads darkened by their own ignorance, a darkness that the bill would perpetuate.
The pretense that the bill favors parental involvement is preposterous. The ideal of parental involvement in important decisions like birth control in their children's lives is admirable. However, no study is necessary to prove that a plurality of teens would never go to their parents to talk about sex willingly unless forced to by the circumstances, as in pregnancy. Denying these teens early access to birth control through programs like the FPW will only add numbers to the groups of teens who use no contraception at all.
Driving up teen pregnancy seems to run counter-intuitive to the goals of anti-abortion advocates and fiscal conservatives alike. Few teenage, low-income women are realistically going to be able to care for a child; that's just common sense. Abortion may seem like the only option when preventative measures like contraception are not readily available.
Even if these women decide that abortion is not right for them and keep the child despite the difficulty in raising them, there are still the costs to the state to consider. The average child costs $6,300 a year to educate, and coupled with likely costs in welfare, an unplanned pregnancy will costs thousands more to the state, a fact that should make most fiscal conservatives cringe.
The bottom line is if the backers of this bill actually value human life as much as they say they do, they would do everything in their power to prevent teen pregnancy, not simply decry it. Life may begin at conception, but it does continue well into the teenage years where easy access to contraceptives could mean all the difference in preventing another abortion.
