There Must Be Someone to Blame, Right?

For almost a week now many news watchers around the country have been riveted to the story from Gloucester, Massachusetts about seventeen teenage girls executing a pregnancy pact. They range in ages from fourteen to sixteen and all promised that they would have children at the same time and raise them together. One so desperately wanted to conceive that she utilized the services of a twenty-four year old homeless man.

You can predict the response. Some blame the difficult economic times, others blame the school system. On Fox News last night an analyst actually suggested that the sex education they received was not sufficient enough (seems to me that they figured it out just fine.) Of course the parents will all face the righteous indignation of society. The Roman Catholic Church and its stance against contraception has received blame as well. Catholic parents opposed the dispensation of contraception at school without parental consent (horror of horrors!)

This had nothing to do with the Catholic Church and their anti-birth control beliefs. These girls were TRYING to get pregnant. All the contraception in the world could not save them from themselves. Certainly the school sends a certain message when it has nurseries in it to help school age mothers, then again it is important that they do receive an education to have a chance of escaping a life on the welfare rolls.

This had everything to do with bad judgment and immaturity. Like it or not, the human body achieves physical maturity before mental maturity. Did these girls know what they were getting into? Probably not. That being said, they made the choice and now they must do the best they can to raise their children properly. It is not the fault of the school, the community, or the Roman Catholic Church. Their parents may bear some responsibility, but the fact is that they made the choice.

Life is about making choices and facing responsibilities. How can schools be blamed for what students elect to do on their spare time. Those that blame schools must have expectations that the schools should be empowered to know and direct a child's entire existence. That is a road no one wants to tread.

There's no one to blame. And it is not a tragedy unless one of these girls gets convinced to murder the life growing inside of them for the sake of convenience. They have a hard row to hoe, but that is the life they chose. Making them live up to their responsibilities is a better object lesson for other kids than assigning blame or giving the girls an easy way out.

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Congratulations to the West Virginia State Republican Party and its chair Dr. Doug McKinney for a fine convention last Saturday. We also thank those in the West Virginia State Republican Executive Committee and other valuable state party members who worked so hard to make it work so well. The speakers were outstanding and gave our candidates practical intellectual ammunition to use against the Ruling Party and their anti-business ideology.