Withholding treatment is murder, in my book.
“Parents would have to give their teenagers permission before they could receive birth control or be treated for sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse or mental illness, under a bill approved in a House committee on Tuesday.”
Heaven forbid they should get treated for life-threatening conditions without permission! Supporters say the aim of the bill is to restore parental control over teenagers lives. I say the aim is to kill teenagers who have sex or use drugs, and maybe if they’re bullied and harassed for being gay, they can commit suicide rather than get counseling for depression. Remember, these same people want to make sure their teenagers have easy access to (and training with) their gun collections (or be able to buy them online if their hippie parents don’t have any). The life of the child was never their concern.
Unless that child isn’t alive yet, since they also approved a new law regarding abortion. Since parental permission was already required there, the new bill will require parents to have their permission notarized by a Notary Public. Because of course the small government party wants to involve a random stranger in the the most difficult private health decision of your life. Who wouldn’t want to tell their Notary Public about how their daughter was brutally raped a month ago?
But let’s get back to permission for treatment and birth control again. Thanks to increased use of contraceptives (and, related, having Democratic governors from 1993 until this year, when Republican Pat McCrory took office), teen pregnancy is at an all-time low in NC, having declined over 58% since its peak in 1990. And NC also has very low rates, relatively speaking, of alcohol abuse by minors and below average rates of drug abuse by minors (source: 2006-2007 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health). HIV rates are about average. So clearly the problem isn’t a need to do something about teen pregnancy, drug use, or STDs; the problem for Republicans is that teenagers are solving these problems for themselves. Teenagers thinking for themselves has long been a nightmare for conservatives.
And hey, maybe this is about race, too, since African Americans make up 68% of reported AIDS diagnoses in North Carolina source: Kaiser Family Foundation). Yes, their agenda includes discouraging black teenagers from getting tested for HIV. Lovely. That’s a backdoor pathway to genocide in my book.
Take a moment to think about the kind of parent who will say “No” when their child asks to be treated for an STD or drug abuse. The first thing that comes to mind is the parent that was involved in the sexual act in the first place, or supplied the drugs, and fears being discovered. The second thing that comes to mind is the parent that simply despises his or her children and welcomes “God’s punishment” of their children, even if the result is death (and drug abuse can lead to DUI vehicular manslaughter of uninvolved innocents, too). Are these the people whose “control” we should be protecting?