According to the latest research from the Kids Count 2008 data book, released on June 12, New Mexico and Texas tied for last place among states with the highest teen birth rate — 62 teen births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19. (The nationwide average is 40.) Only the District of Columbia, at 63 births, ranked worse.
In Dona Ana County the most recent statistics from the state Department of Health put those numbers the highest in the state, with 606 of Las Cruces’ 2007 hospital deliveries born to school-age mothers, 55 to mothers 15 and younger.
Teen Pregnancy Prevention Workgroup Chairman Earl Nissen of Las Cruces said he had heard two recent reports of girls from Doña Ana County traveling to Mexico for an abortion.
“If someone wants to terminate their pregnancy in Doña Ana County, it’s a hard process to get done. That’s something we have to address,” Nissen said.
One Las Cruces mother who works in the women’s health field, and requested anonymity for fear of losing her job, said she knew of at least one Las Cruces teen who had planned to go to Juárez for an abortion in 2007, just after receiving her driver’s license. She did not know if the girl went through with the plan.
“Teenagers in our community are looking for services to terminate pregnancies in Mexico,” said the woman, whose friend’s daughter was a friend and classmate of the pregnant girl. “Her mother just told me that story in relation to, “Gosh, what are our young girls facing? ... Are we still living in these times? Our daughters don’t feel that they have any option?’”
The nearest abortion services to Las Cruces are provided in El Paso, Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
When asked about the possibility of New Mexico girls traveling to Juárez for an illegal procedure, Johnny Wilson, vice president of external affairs for Planned Parenthood in Albuquerque, said “unfortunately, I think it’s very possible.”
Work group member Carol Tucker Trelease said she hadn’t heard the Juárez stories in a long time, until recently: “Those rumors had gone away for a while,” she said.
Trelease, the executive director of a family foundation that promotes family planning, sex education and reproductive rights, has been working on similar issues since 1974, when she began work with Planned Parenthood of New Mexico, which has no Las Cruces office.
“It’s frustrating, but you don’t give up,” Trelease said. “We still have a high teen birth rate, so that’s problematic, but at least we’re talking now about having comprehensive health education perhaps made available.”
Most effective, Trelease said, would be education combined with clinical family-planning services, available through the state Department of Health and at school-based health centers; programs that encourage male and parental involvement; and encouraging students to be active in service-learning.
Trelease said a teen pregnancy prevention work group in Española is also interested in pressing for a statewide sex ed requirement: “Information does not cause sexual activity,” she said. “That doesn’t happen. Information promotes responsibility if people decide to be sexually active.”
In January 2007, the Las Cruces school board voted 4 to 1 in favor of implementing the state-mandated sex-education curriculum. Las Cruces Public Schools Superintendent Stan Rounds said “certain parts of human sexuality” are already integrated into state-mandated curriculum.
“This is an issue that tends to be fairly controversial,” Rounds said. “The balancing act is making sure children receive information, while not crossing certain bounds.”
The Doña Ana County Teen Pregnancy Prevention Work Group plans to meet with legislators at its August meeting. Rounds said any bill would have to “give enough latitude to the district to design and implement the curriculum appropriately for every child.”
A study for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services of more than 2,000 students in four abstinence-only programs over four to six years found “no effect on the sexual abstinence of youth.”
But Rounds said that doesn’t mean comprehensive sex education is “a magic bullet” for what he acknowledged was a “deluge of teen pregnancies.”
“It’s a bigger issue, unfortunately, than just education. It’s a societal values issue, it’s a community attentiveness and intervention issue. I think if we had the magic bullet, we’d have already solved this issue,” Rounds said. “I’ve been in this particular debate several times. Legislating it doesn’t make it work any better than making it work at a local policy level.”
Wilson said he agreed that there was no “magic bullet” to prevent teen pregnancies, but that “the only thing schools can do ... that has a chance is comprehensive sex ed.”
State Sen. Mary Jane Garcia, D-Doña Ana, said she would have to study the proposal and compare it to other states’ experiences before she could say if it were “a real solution.”
“I don’t know that we should be putting the onus on the schools,” said Garcia, though she had read the Kids Count statistics and found them “distressing” and “horrifying.”
“Some of my colleagues have their heads in the sand. (Young people) are having sex at 13 and 14,” said Garcia, who reversed her support of requiring parental consent for family planning services after hearing about a young girl who died because of a botched, illegal abortion.
Garcia said she was in favor of home visits with parents and early intervention among young children, to teach them “that there are certain behaviors that are not good and not acceptable, that they need to turn away from smoking, drinking, doing drugs and along with that, teen pregnancy.”
To read the complete teen pregnancy series go to: http://www.lcsun-news.com/teenpregnancyseries
Ashley Meeks can be reached at ameeks@lcsun-news.com
Click here to read more of my articles at StandForLife.net
2) One of the main issues for the Catholic Church is the sanctity of life, but a large percentage of Catholics vote for Democrats, who are almost 100% pro-choice.
3) Why doesn’t anyone ask a pregnant mother how far along she is with her fetus? When she’s expecting she often will say she’s going to have a baby or she can feel the baby move. When the pro-choicers want to abort it, the term “baby” is never used. It’s then just a fetus, a parasite, or a blob.
4) It’s interesting how our society reacts when a newborn is found dead in a dumpster, or wherever. There is the appropriate reaction of sadness, disgust, and outrage. The news reporters give the report with a grim face and solemn tone of voice. But if the woman killed it a short time earlier when it was in the womb, then there would be no reporting of it or no societal indignation. In fact, it is so inconsequential to most people that they don’t even care to know it happened.
5) The Democrat Party and liberal view is that they are for the little guy. Also, they often shout from the rooftops about human rights violations somewhere in the world. But, of course, they exclude being a proponent of the littlest guy and disregard its human rights.
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When: Fri Apr 11 – Sun Jun 29
Where: Mass said at the Chapel of Holy Innocents
One of Project Defending Life’s goals is to have pro-life Mass celebrated every day in the Chapel of Holy Innocents. This coming week we are coming closer to achieving that goal. *Beginning on Monday, April 28, 2008 there will be a Mass said at the Chapel of Holy Innocents at 12:10 PM.* Please join us.
http://www.defendinglife.org/pro-life_news/abortion_events/mon.mass.html
When: Tue May 6 – Thu Jan 1 ‘09
Where: Planned Parenthood
The most important hours of intercessory prayer outside an abortion mill are during the times they are actually killing unborn babies. These hours are listed below. Come out and pray. Call us at the PDL office, 505-266-4100, if you’d like to join others in prayer during the abortion hours at the place where babies are dying.
Planned Parenthood
Address: 701 San Mateo Boulevard NE, Albuquerque
Tuesday 8:00 to 11:30 am
Wednesday 12:00 to 3:30 pm
Thursday 8:00 to 11:30 am
Date: Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Repeat Type: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 (every Week, Tue, Wed, Thu)
The reverse is also true. If the pro-choicer first makes a claim, then the pro-lifer shouldn’t automatically dismiss it. They also shouldn’t start with their own mantras, such as “Abortion is murder,” or “Aren’t you glad your mother didn’t abort you?” It’s the pro-lifers responsibility to work through the pro-choice arguments, one at a time, and attempt to show the fallacy of them.
In both cases there needs to constantly be a focus on one particular area of the debate. It must be done in a logical fashion or emotions often will take over on either side and little progress will be made.
]]>1) If the unborn is growing, it must be alive. If it has human parents, it must be human. And living humans like you and I are valuable.
2) If you don’t know if the unborn is alive, then why take the risk by having an abortion? If it’s not alive, then why is an abortion necessary?
3) The heart of the unborn begins to beat at three weeks and the brain begins to function at six weeks.
4) The unborn has the three characteristics of being alive: growth, metabolizing food for energy, and reacting to stimuli. Its DNA is distinctly human and also different from its human parents.
5) The Law of Biogenesis states that each living thing that reproduces creates its own kind. Obviously, human parents can only produce human offspring.
6) How can two humans create something that is not human but later becomes one?
7) We don’t allow the killing of toddlers, so why should the killing of unborn humans be accepted?
]]>This response sounds foolproof and a very “nice” way of answering the abortion issue. But if you think closely about the response, it could be asked, “Why do you personally oppose abortion or why do you think it should be rare?” It seems that their answer would be that it is the taking of a life, or a similar response. The rebuttal would be “So you’re against abortion because it takes a life, but it’s perfectly fine for someone else to take a life.” “You’re against the killing of a human, but also for the killing of a human.”
What if we settled other issues this way? “I’m personally opposed to murder, but if a person wants to commit it that’s their decision or choice.” In 2001 Andrea Yates killed her five young children. Using this logic one could say “I’m personally opposed to Andrea Yates killing her children, but it’s her decision, her choice.” We basically could use this logic concerning any law in this country.
Click here to read more of my articles at StandForLife.net
What occurred at that confrontation is what frequently happens when the pro-life and pro-choice sides interact. Both groups will loudly express their well-worn slogans, which provokes their particular group into a frenzy. Since Roe v. Wade, there have been plenty of marches with both pro-life or pro-choice convictions, chanting and possibly hearing a few speeches, but something has been obviously missing. Constructive dialogue has been sorely lacking between the two persuasions. If one side were to listen to the other’s arguments and conclusions, they could determine if their position could stand up to scrutiny. One constructive way to discuss the issue is to find the common or middle ground between the polarized positions and progress from there.
For instance, a pro-choice proponent often says that the three-week old embryo is just a blob of cells and tissue and nothing else. Instead of going right to the “it’s a human” argument, the pro-lifer could say “Yes, I totally agree with you that it looks like a blob to me. I don’t see any arms or hands or many other features.” A way to ease into your position it to ask, “Have you every thought that even though it’s so small, it’s still a human, because it has human parents and has its own DNA? I’m sure you realize that the blob is basically what we looked like at that stage of our development.”
If a pro-lifer is confronted with someone who is for abortion, possibly the best way to make your argument is to keep asking them questions so you can meet in the middle. Then you can eventually work your way back to the pro-life position. A possible dialogue could be, “So what do you think of partial-birth abortion?” Most of the time, they will be against that procedure. The next step is to work your way backwards in the development of the fetus. “How about a seven-month-old fetus that could live outside the mother’s womb?” Often they are hesitant to agree to an abortion at that point. Finally, ask them, “At what time should be the appropriate time for an abortion?” When they get pinned down, then it’s, “Why at that time and not a month or a few weeks from then?” You can move the discussion to the subject of what really is the unborn child.
One issue that pro-choicers think pro-lifers tend to ignore is that there are pregnant women in difficult circumstances. If these women give birth, the result will be dire beyond belief. This has to be recognized as a reality before the dialogue can be advanced. One way of doing this is to say, “Yes, you are right. Often there is not a perfect time to have a baby no matter what your situation is. There are many occasions when a young married woman is pregnant but is struggling with finances, school or career. Even someone who is financially stable and living in a nice neighborhood could have a difficult time putting a career on hold to raise a child. I totally agree with what you are claiming, but in most cases, the problems are temporary or one can learn to adjust possibly with some assistance.” Usually there are personal stories that can be used to back up this argument.
Pro-choice advocates could improve their dialogue by not diverting the subject into another area that is off topic. An example is a discussion about the nature of the unborn. The diversion would be, “It’s a woman’s body or choice” or “Quit trying to force your religion down my throat.” If they would meet the pro-life argument halfway, possibly they could see the reasoning behind the pro-life viewpoint. An example would be “Yes, I agree that the fetus at that stage has a heartbeat, but I still feel it is a woman’s right to choose to abort it.”
Often the person who is pro-choice tries to divert the discussion by attacking the pro-lifer personally, which, of course, gets the dialogue bogged down. They will say, “You’re just a Christian!” or “How many babies have you adopted?” or “You’re a man, so you’ll never have to face this decision.” Those rebuttals have nothing to do with them making their case about the pro-choice position and discussing the actual abortion of the unborn.
Of course, this all sounds like a fantasy pro-life/pro-choice situation, and it appears difficult to do. For instance, if a pro-lifer thinks abortion is murder and won’t budge on that point or a pro-choicer thinks it’s only the mother’s choice, then it’s not their nature to back down at all. I have seen this middle- ground method be successful in many instances. It cracks the door open enough so one side can see how the other thinks and also breaks down prejudices each has against the other. On the surface it seems that when you try to meet the other side in the middle you abandon your principles, but, in reality, if you can slowly move that middle to your end of the spectrum, then you have made tremendous progress. It sure beats chanting or yelling your message to someone who is returning the fire with their viewpoint.
An excellent resource to study this approach is a book titled “Common Ground Without Compromise, 25 Questions to Create Dialogue on Abortion” by Stephen Wagner. He delves into great detail about how to have common ground discussions concerning abortion.
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