OK, I will now make a lot of people mad, but it has been gnawing at my fingers since this show started, and I have to say it, so I will.
Yes, it's long, but it's shorter than nine months.
So read it anyway, even if your custom is to wisely just scroll past anything with my name by it.
Not one of these little girls (which is what they are legally, and that's for a reason) intended to get pregnant.
Every single one of them got pregnant as a result of unprotected sex.
If their mothers (or if mother won't, auntie or godmother or grandma) had taken them to get birth control the first time they "started," the chances of any of them getting pregnant would have been reduced by 90 something per cent.
Little girls - and little boys - may make bad choices like having unprotected sex. They are kids. That's why they are still in school, still living at home. We give them a pass. Nature doesn't, but we do.
Their mothers, aunties, etc, on the other hand, are grown-ups. They chose not to get them on birth control when they became physically capable of conception. I don't give them a pass.
Nor to the elders of the boyfriends, who chose not to provide him with condoms when he reached puberty.
This is just as important for parents who feel strongly that abstinence is the best choice for teens, for reasons faith-based or secular.
A contraceptive injection is not going to interfere with the practice of abstinence, it will not impact the intactness of a girl's hymen, nor will it make her - or her brother any more likely to engage in unintended, unplanned sexual activity.
That is an old wives' tale.
If they are "good kids," even if they do have sex, they will still be good kids, they can still continue practicing abstinence. Even if having sex would be against the doctrines of your faith tradition, every faith tradition comes with some sort of forgiveness feature.
Nature, however, does not.
Unlike deities, or even human beings, who have the capacity to love unconditionally, to understand that people are human and make bad choices, make mistakes, and forgive, the physical process of conception, those sperms and eggs, do not.
They are just as rigid and unforgiving, just as unable to comprehend that your daughter is good and devout and chaste - as is a disease germ or a virus.
Kids depend on adults to protect them from harm. Unwanted teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases are card-carrying, 100% Authentic Harm.
It is up to
us to make sure that kids have contraception, that they have condoms to protect them from disease, no matter how much we may wish or hope that they will wait until they are older, until they fall in love, until they get married - even if we have very strong beliefs that they should.
We know that the default decision-maker is biology, not religion or politics.
We are able, as adults, to separate our emotions, our beliefs, our wishes and desires, from physical realities that do not respect any of those things.
As grown-ups, we are able to recognize that the sexual urge is one of the strongest instincts our species has.
We are able to understand that when that urge is combined with the raging hormones of adolescence, the result is literally a force of nature - a force so compelling that throughout history, across cultures, not even the penalty of certain death has prevented young people from having sex.
Because we are adults, we don't fall into the trap of "it won't happen to ME" Magical Thinking.
We know that a sperm can fertilize the egg of a good, devout and chaste girl who believes in abstinence and makes only one mistake as readily as if she were married and actively seeking to become pregnant.
We understand that a disease organism will infect the body of a girl from a good family, who only "slips up" one time, as rapidly and uncaringly as if she were a sex worker living in terrible conditions who does not even know what a "disease organism" is.
Even though their bodies may be ready for reproduction, kids may not be able to understand all those things yet - much in the same way they may not be emotionally ready to have sex yet.
Their bodies are just bodies. They will do what bodies do. That is nature, and
nature doesn't forgive, and nature doesn't care. That's our responsibility, our job. While there are exceptionally mature teens who may be the exception to the rule, for most kids, any caring and forgiving that gets done will be done by us - the grownups in their lives.
So please, when they hit puberty, just hook them up.
You can lecture them about abstinence all the way to the clinic and all the way back home if you want to.
And if you are the auntie or godmother, or guncle or grandpa, and mami and papi won't do it, then
you do it.
Your comadre or your sister or daughter will be mad at you. It will create family drama.
But not doing it puts you at risk of being much madder at yourself that you didn't do it, puts the family at risk of a whole nother league of drama, and worse, puts the baby you have all loved since the day she was born at risk of "becoming a statistic" - at risk of unwanted pregnancy, disease, or both.