Contraception

I know you've all been waiting for a Holiday update. Here goes:

It was good. I ate a lot. I was really happy to see friends and family. Lovely time of year. And it was a White Christmas! I had a lot of fun making my christmas cards.

Now on to other stuff.

As you no doubt recall, King Middle School here in Portland approved a decision to provide birth control pills to sexually active middle school students. King Middle School happens to have students from as young as 11 all the way up to the ages 14 and 15.

People were pissed off when they found out. The most logical (in my mind) were the ones mad that the kids wouldn't even have to tell their parents. The least were assuming all the kids would start receiving it automatically. King already provided condoms, it's worth noting.

It seemed like a reasonable plan to me. They're not providing anything that's not already available to the kids. All it takes is a trip to the medic and any kid can have a completely confidential meeting with the doctor to talk about whatever. The parent has to leave. So the school confidentiality issue isn't an issue. Other people were concerned that 11 year olds taking the pill would suffer hormonal problems. Well, they probably would. But seeing as how you still have to get doctor approval and a doctor's prescription to get the pill, I doubt a lot of them will be getting it. And the five students (last I checked) who are receiving the pill are all 14 or 15.

There were, of course, knee jerk reactions. But as people started paying attention to the information that was already readily available they calmed down. For the most part. There was still a movement, however, to recall three of the school board members who voted for the pill.

It failed miserably.

And that makes me really happy. They needed 3,000 signatures for all three school board members and got under 300.

What makes me happiest about it is that I think it proves that most people are reasonable and in the face of all the good evidence that this program will do good things, they accept that. The petition has been available for signatures for quite a while, and it still got fewer people than a Shaker Meeting.

BAM!

EDIT: I corrected some figures at the end.