"Pro-Life" : Babies, Yes; Educated Teen Moms, NO

Denver schools are considering granting a minimum of 4 weeks f maternity leave to teenage girls  who give birth, as some other schools systems in the nations do. Without a note from her doctor  justifying her absence, she is expected to return to school the day after she is released from the hospital or face being charged with  an unauthorized absence. I saw the CNN segment on this topic a couple of weeks ago. I hoped someone else would cover it, but apparently no one did. I think it’s important enough that it deserves to be disused here, even a few weeks later.

"My initial reaction is if we are punishing girls like that, that is unacceptable," said Nicole Head, one of the counselors who brought the matter to the school board last month. "We've got to do something."
http://www.denverpost.com/...

Experts say mother and child need time to bond,  and the first few weeks are crucial to forming that bond. Toss in how physically stressful childbirth is, and the sheer exhaustion level of caring for a newborn, and you’d think maternity leave would be obvious.  It might also cut down on child abuse, which I consider a plus.

But there are other points to consider.. Day care is expensive and beyond the reach of most new mothers. School programs usually require you to attend during the day, when there is no grandmother who might babysit—she’s probably working too. With rare exceptions most high schools don’t have a day care center ( A handful of schools around the country targeting new mothers do; those schools usually provide parenting classes and time to breastfeed as well as normal classes. Sadly many of these schools are closing due to lack of funding). The result is that far too many teenage Moms drop out, and never go back.  ANythign that breaks this cycle is a good thing, in my books

Teen mothers face a challenging future, with many dropping out. A third of teen moms receive their high-school diplomas and 1.5 percent get college degrees before they turn 30, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
http://www.denverpost.com/...

Without an education, girls who give birth in their teens  are more likely to live and raise their children in poverty, with disastrous effects for their children.

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The children of teenage parents face severe health, economic, and social consequences. Because one-third of pregnant teens do not receive adequate prenatal care, their babies are 23 percent more likely to be low birth weight; they are more likely to have childhood health problems, and to be hospitalized than those born to older mothers (AGI, 1999; Martin et al., 2006; National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 2006).

• In 2004, the infant mortality rate for children born to teen mothers was significantly higher than the national infant mortality rate — 9.75 deaths per 1,000 live births versus 6.78, respectively. The infant mortality rate was highest for teens younger than 15 years of age — 17.11 deaths per 1,000 live births (Mathews & MacDorman, 2007).

• The offspring of teenage mothers are more likely to be abused or neglected than those of women who delay childbearing, and they are less likely to receive proper nutrition, health care, and cognitive and social stimulation (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998; Maynard, 1997). On average, a child born to a teenage mother visits a medical provider 3.8 times per year, versus 4.3 times for a child born to a mother over the age of 20 years (National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 2004).

• Children born to teen mothers are more likely to live in poverty. Seventy-eight percent of children born to unmarried teen mothers who did not graduate from high school live in poverty. Comparatively, the poverty rate for children born to mothers who postponed childbirth, are currently married, and received a high school diploma is nine percent (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2007).

• Children born to teen mothers are also at greater risk of social behavioral problems and lower intellectual and academic achievement — one study found that children of teenage mothers are almost three times as likely to be incarcerated during their adolescence or early 20s as are the children of older mothers (Maynard, 1997).

• Children born to teen mothers are less likely to graduate from high school and more likely to be unemployed and to become teenage parents themselves than those born to women who delay childbearing (Maynard, 1997).

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/...

But these girls are doing "the right thing" as one social worker interviewed on CNN phrased it, so you you’d think conservatives would applaud this effort to help out teen Moms who keep their babies?

Not One Bit.  Janice Cruose, Concerned Women For America’s answer to Harry Potter’s holier-than-thou,  sickly sweet Dolores Umbridge,  wanted no part of it. In that same CNN segment (the link to the =video that I had no longer works, so I can’t provide it), she railed at some length about how bad an example this would set and how girls would coo over their friend’s burgeoning belly and how cute she looked in her maternity clothes (I’ve never heard a teen suggest maternity clothes were "cute" and I was a jr. high teacher). While she stopped short of calling for burning at the stake, I got the distinct impression that she believed that a session in the stocks being pelted by rotten vegetables and perhaps a Scarlet Letter tattooed on the girls’ foreheads (I suggest a scarlet S for Slut) was an appropriate penalty for having sex outside of marriage.

In case you wondered, CWA is typical of many "pro-life" groups: it doesn’t support comprehensive or abstinence-plus ( a course which stresses  postponing sex  or waiting till marriage while giving accurate information on preventing STDs and pregnancy) sex education courses, just abstinence only (complete with inaccurate information and outright lies about the effectiveness of condoms in preventing STDs and the reliability of methods of birth control).  They regard sex outside marriage as  anathema and girls who have it as Fallen Women who don’t deserve any help or encouragement, and who should be isolated lest their promiscuity  contaminate  Good Girls Who Just Say No. She wants them shipped away to relatives to hide for 9 months or tucked away in homes for wayward girls.  They want these girls punished for their sins, even if they did "the right thing" and gave birth and chose to raise their baby—the way Crisis Pregnancy Centers and the Christian Right urge them to do.

What nobody questioned in that segment was that keeping the baby was "the right thing."  It may be for some girls. We’ve had female Kossacks here write about their choice to give birth and how, although it was hard, it was the right choice for them. They were also brutally frank about the difficulties they faced, and didn’t sugarcoat it at all, as CWA does. We’ve had other Kossacks write about how abortion or adoption was their choice. The one thing you will find true of the female Kossacks who write about this issue is that we all back comprehensive sex ed, wide availability at lower prices for birth control that works (in other words, the Pill) along with condom use for STD prevention, fewer restrictions on abortions for these girls (it’s damned hard too impossible  to get a judicial exemption for parental notification in many places, and for quite a few girls, the price they’d pay if their parents found out would be high—being tossed onto the street or a beating--or even life-threatening) and support for those girls who choose to keep their babies.

"The Right Thing" differs widely from case to case.  And all these girls need support form the rest of us if we want to break the cycle of poverty that teenage mothers all too often find themselves and their children trapped in. We need effective sex ed and widespread availability of effective contraception –and yes, even distribution in schools, as Portland ME is doing—and we need programs that encourage these girls to stay in school.   That means we need either paid daycare or schools for teen mothers, where daycare is provided along with parenting classes and breast-feeding time which are built into t he curriculum, along with internships and career advice.

And we need a whole lot fewer Concerned Women For America who are only concerned about How It Will Look, not about helping pregnant teenagers or preventing pregnancy in the first place.  Just another classic example of how so much of the "pro-life" camp stops caring about babies the moment they are born. It’s all about punishment of sin.  And yes, kudos to those who call themselves "pro-life" who actually put their money where their mouth is by helping these teen Moms with financial help and emotional support—Dad’s old church had a monthly collection for local Moms and  "adopted" several young mothers  to help them get through school and build a decent life for their children.  But Janice Crouse and her fellows at CWA can shut their trasp, and the rest of us will be glad of the silence.