Teen pregnancy in our area.. a real shocker.

The good, the bad and the really, really ugly.

The good: Judging by the number of young mums I see on Beckwith Street ... I did not see this one coming ....

"Leeds, Grenville and Lanark have some of the lowest rates of pregnancy for 15- to 19-year-olds in the province," said Jane Futcher, the director of clinical services at the local health unit.

The mandate of the sexual health clinics in Canada was to increase access to contraception and increase knowledge about personal responsibility and lifestyles, ultimately decreasing the rate of pregnancy in 15- to 19-year-olds to 40 per 1,000 population. In Leeds and Grenville, the rate is approximately 20 in 1,000 in the same age group.

The bad: If you are a parent this outta scare the shit outta you ...

This information is necessary because some kids area already experimenting by age 12, she said.

Because there is no age of consent for seeking contraceptive devices in Ontario, students are able to get birth control without parental permission.

You mean to tell me a twelve year old can get birth control and nobody tells the parents ??? Dear god.

The really, really ugly:

Nationally, more than 33,000 young women under the age of 19 get pregnant every year and more than 18,000 opt for abortion.

Eight teen thousand lives lost a year for less than a year of "inconvenience". I know so many couples who would just love to have one or two of these lost souls.

Another angle ... I've always wondered how women live with themselves ... a quick google search .. look for a credible source ... the answer is ... many don't.

An Elliot Institute study published in Aug. 2003 in the Southern Medical Journal found that women who had abortions were seven times more likely to commit suicide than women who gave birth.

Reardon said that pressure to abort, followed by grief for the loss of the child and profound regret over making a choice they didn't want to make, and feelings of isolation and abandonment by loved ones, has created a "pressure cooker situation for women" in which they feel that suicide is the only way to end their pain.

"It's a recipe for tragedy," he said. "Statistics like these should serve as a wake-up call that after 30 years of abortion on demand, abortion is harming women, not helping them." [Elliot Institute, 3/04]

I've always thought that short of death or grievous injury .... just about the worse news that I could receive from my children is that they decided to suck my grandchild into a sink. For convienience.