The Politics of Pregnancy

Barack Obama is under fire today by the media pundits Limbaugh and Hannity (well..at least Hannity) because he is in favor of age-appropriate sex education in schools, starting in kindergarten.

Well...I don't know if "sex education" is necessary in schools, but "gender education" is definitely needed. Something to teach girls that they are important people just as people, and not only if they're existence is validated by having a boyfriend or worse, a baby, which is what most teenagers seem to think. (And that's the all-pervasive sex media at work).

Illegitimate pregnancy is dragging the US down. It's a real problem in the African-American community, where 2/3rd of all children are born out of wedlock. Forget about the fact that there's no father influence for all these kids, and just think of the fact that these are girls who probably can't read or write, will never be able to get jobs, and will thus be on welfare for the rest of their lives, as will their children. (And since they have nothing better to do with their lives, and no reason not to, they'll just keep popping out those kids...)

It's not just a black problem, of course, Chicanas and Latinas and whites have the same problem. Will sex education in schools stop it? Who knows? But perhaps if Sarah Palin's 17-year old daughter had known about condoms, she wouldn't now be pregnant and unmarried. And yeah, apparently there is going to be a wedding...so at least she knows who the father is...

(Although the thing is, as I referenced earlier, I think girls do know about condoms. But they want to get pregnant, because they see having a little baby as proof to all their friends that a boy finds them attractive enough to have sex with! Not attractive enough to get married, of course, but attractive enough to have a one-night stand with... Or they want the welfare payments, or they want the unconditional love a baby is supposed to give and don't think about all the hard work its gonna take to raise the little nipper.)