It boggles the mind.

I've been wanting to blog about the school in Maine giving out the birth control pill to middler schoolers since the story broke, but I just haven't been able to see straight enough to even type about it. Truly, the mind boggles at the very thought. I'm just now reading an article on it where a parent (a PARENT!!!!) is quoted as saying, "I think it's a great idea. Someone is finally advocating for these students to take care of themselves."

WHAT?!?!

Would she be in favor of providing clean needles to the ones who want to shoot up heroin? Because those can be hard to get ahold of, too, you know? And we'd hate for those kids to not be safe while engaging in completely inappropriate behavior.

*boggle boggle boggle*

Wouldn't you say, "Hm, time for some serious abstinence ed" if this happened in your neighborhood? Wouldn't you say, "Hm, time to make sure there's more for these kids to do around here than have sex before they're old enough to even drive"? Wouldn't you say, "Hm, time to reconsider the music and TV and movies I let my kids listen to and watch and start getting a little more involved in their lives"?

Yeah, you know, parents have so much on their plates these days, no one can really expect them to, you know, instill their kids with values and morals. Or teach their daughters that their bodies are sacred and beautiful and their virginity is a precious gift that protects their hearts as well as their health. Or teach their boys that a real man learns to control his impulses and protects the women in his life instead of using them as entertainment or to satisfy his selfish desires.

But yeah, that takes a lot of time and perseverance and all that, you know, being-a-parent-and-not-just-your-kid's-friend stuff. So gosh darn time-consuming. It's way, way easier to just turn your kid over to the state and let the government decide what's appropriate and what's not. And then, when your daughter gets pregnant anyway because no one told her that the pill can actually fail (and since she has a hard time remembering her homework, who can expect her to remember to take that pill every single day at the exact same time?), you can let the state usher her into an abortion without ever telling her about the years of mental anguish she'll experience because of it--or else just let her have the baby and put her on the path to being even MORE dependent on the state since chances of her getting a job and supporting herself out of high school (if she finishes high school) are awfully low. Or if she manages not to get pregnant, you can just blame the state when she lands in the hospital from a stroke or blood clot in her twenties, or blame the state when she's ready to start a family and her fertility is so screwed up she can't conceive, or blame the state when she comes home and tells you she got raped because someone found out she was one of those girls on birth control. Of course it's not your fault, Mom and Dad. You did your job--you let her live her life the way she wanted to and express herself sexually however she wanted to since, at 12, she obviously was old enough to understand the implications. Heaven forbid you squash her self-exploration.

And when you get a phone call from some girl's parents saying your son is responsible for getting his daughter pregnant, you can...well, I don't know what you can do. This whole thing is so freaking insane to me I can't even begin to imagine what your reasoning is like if you think all this is a brilliant idea.

Just another reason why I'm homeschooling my kid. I may not live in Maine, but if it can happen there, there's no reason why people can't be that stupid here.