Middle-schoolers get the pill

The article "Middle-schoolers get the pill" was about a middle school in Portland, Maine. The middle school wants to try to prevent teen pregnancy by giving their students, mostly eleven to thirteen years old, access to birth control through the school. There are two major viewpoints shared in this article. The first is that middle-schoolers shouldn't be having sex and by giving them access to contraception the school is encouraging them to do it. One person compared the situation to "dealing with the reality of teen smoking by handing out low-tar cigarettes to the seventh grade".

The other view is the one advocating this new program that the middle school wants to start. They believe that middle-schoolers are having sex anyway so they should be provided with the means to protect themselves. They say that the problems that can come from unprotected and underage sex are too great to just ignore this problem and hope that kids won't have sex. With easy access to contraception they would be lowering the rate of teen pregnancy, which causes kids to drop out of school, and the amount of sexually transmitted diseases.

The article provided one main counterargument against giving these students access to the pill. That was the comparison between handing out contraception and cigarettes to teens. This is not a valid argument because they are two totally different situations that aren’t comparable. Aside from that, it implies that kids will want to have sex just because the school is giving out contraception, which isn’t true at all. A perspective that I feel was overlooked was that of the parents and the kids. These are the two people that will be most affected by this and they didn't even consider what either of these parties think. The parents would especially be an important factor in this issue because they usually have the most influence over school policies.