Touchy Topic, Part 3

First of all, I want to thank everyone for their comments on part 1 and 2. I have to admit I was a little nervous about getting harsh criticism for this topic.  But I believe it would be worth it if just one person reads something here that helps them or someone they know dealing with unplanned pregnancies/abortion.

So now for my thoughts on Pregnancy Pact, which I suppose had nothing to do with unplanned pregnancies since these girls planned to get pregnant.  But some of the topics really do still apply.  I don't want to say I enjoyed the movie, but I do think it was pretty well done.  I do think that some good messages may have been missed by the casual viewer as many were simply in stunned state of contemplating a group of teen girls planning to get pregnant and then going out and drinking and smoking.  But I don't think that girls intentionally getting pregnant is super far fetched.  I think it is common in girls who are desperately seeking unconditional love, trying to hold on to a relationship or even girls who have a strong maternal instinct.  I guess I'd need to ask a teen girl who saw it to see what they took away about the difficulty of teen pregnancy.  I think the movie attempted to show all the sides of it.  They showed a mother making it work but that it obviously wasn't easy.  Throwing in a quote from her about how moms should get an extra set of arms when they have a baby.  AMEN to that one.  Then they showed the one girl who's mom had had her as a teen.  She thought her mom would be supportive but she was not.  Then one girl ended up losing the guy she was trying desperately to hold on to with having a baby.

Very near the end they showed one girl after she'd delivered and they talked about her 'tearing' and needing something like 30 stitches (I may be wrong on the number but it was something that made even me cringe).  The one girl was totally lost as to where this tearing would have occurred.  Then this new mother is shown with a screaming baby looking miserable.  When her mom (I think it was her mom) tells her to feed the baby she say her nipples are raw and painful.  She's offered a breast pump and looks less than thrilled with her new life.

The one real lesson of the movie is one of pregnancy prevention.  The school nurse wants to make condoms available to the students at the school.  But one mom in particular is totally opposed to it.  She believes that abstinence is the only sex education they need.  Her daughter ends up being one of the girls that gets pregnant.  At the end they have a conversation and the daughter tells her there were times she wanted to go to her but she knew her mother would never understand how she was feeling since she'd waited until she got married.  Her mom confesses that they did not in fact wait.  That they tried but that they'd slipped up a couple times before recommitting each time to waiting.  At the end this mom realizes that maybe she would have been better off if she'd been honest with her daughter.

This message really hit home with me because it was again soo similar to my own story.  After my mom found out I was pregnant, she shared with me her own experience.  I can't say whether things would have happened differently for me if she'd opened up to me before the fact.  But I certainly don't think it would have hurt!!  Maybe it wouldn't have made me wait but maybe if I'd have felt I could have gone to her to start birth control, MAYBE things could have been different.  The full extent of our "talk" went like this, one time I ended up with a crazy big hicky (ah to be 16 again, not), she saw it, gave me a stack of turtlenecks, told me she didn't want to see it again and that I better not be having sex too.  

Obviously, every relationship will be different and even if you talk  to your kids openly, you aren't guaranteed they'll come to you.  But I know that when my boys get a little older we will be open and honest with them.  Hopefully they will chose to wait because even without pregnancy, sex as a teen creates so much more hurt and baggage then need be.  But I hope to be able to leave the door open so that if they decide to have sex that we can be sure to help them take the absolute safest measures possible.  

I personally am not opposed to contraception being available or taught in school but I know many do and I think it should be their right to teach their kids what they want about the subject.  But my word of caution is simply, telling teens simply to not have sex is not the way to go.  They need concrete reasons why they should wait.  They also need some place to go it they don't wait.  Don't shut down the line of communication by creating a my way or the highway type of feeling.