Comments on: Permissible Use of Babygate: Going Beyond the Truth of the Matter Asserted

By: Progressive Conservative

Progressive Conservative — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:24:54 +0000

It’s also inportant to keep in mind that this is just one program. From the same source:
“In Alaska, the public cost associated with teen childbearing is conservatively estimated to be $32 million in 2004, half paid by the federal government and half by the state. This estimate captures net costs – those costs over and above what would have been incurred if a person with similar characteristics to the teen mother delayed childbearing until age 20 or 21. The estimate includes $13 million for public health care (Medicaid and SCHIP), $8 million for child welfare services and $11 million for incarceration of sons of teen mothers. The average annual cost of teen childbearing is $1,825 per teen birth. However, the cost of births to younger teens is higher than that for older teens. The average annual cost associated with a child born to a mother 17 and younger is $5,909.”

By: Narc

Narc — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:04:59 +0000

PC, there are two things you’re not considering, the dollar fell considerably from 1991 to 2005. Therefore, even if the funding had remained constant, it was effectively a cut. Secondly, notice that the birth rate is given per capita. The population of AK did not remain constant. Even if the birth rate remained unchanged, there would still be a net gain in the number of teenage mothers that needed help. Lastly, you’re ignoring the fact that these teen mothers might need help for more than one year. Even if the teenage birth rate dropped to 0% in 2005, there are still all those girls that became mothers in 2004 that need help.

I don’t know if these cuts were reasonable or not, but it’s not a fair comparison to see X% and Y%, that X>Y, and therefore the cuts were justified.

By: Progressive Conservative

Progressive Conservative — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:01:32 +0000

“The birth rate among Alaskan teens ages 15-19 years declined nearly 45% from 1991-2005. The teen birth rate among younger teens (15-17 years) declined 54.2%, from 37.8 per 1,000 population in 1991 to 17.3 in 2005. “

http://www.hss.state.ak.us/dph/wcfh/adolescent/assets/Teen_Preg2007.pdf

An approx. 50% reduction in teen births was met with a 22% cut in funding. How does that seem unfair?

By: Radioactive afikomen

Radioactive afikomen — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:35:23 +0000

@PC:

I hardly think reducing funding for teen mothers from $5 million to $3.9 million is ’slashing’.

The lack of understanding there whapped me upside the head like a load of bricks .

That’s right, PC, because (mostly unwed) teen mothers don’t need money. In fact, I hear they’re just rolling in the dough up there in Alaska. They need to learn to raise children the proper way—in poverty.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:17:55 +0000

How do you make a mistake responsible? By minimizing the negative consequences.

For instance, if you go to a party, drink heavily, and then go home with someone who disgusts you in the cold light of day, you might very well consider that a mistake. By using prophylactics, you reduce the negative consequences. If you make a further mistake and don’t use prophylactics, you can reduce the negative consequences by taking emergency contraception.

Those are the kinds of options that people like Palin don’t want teenagers to know about — they want teenagers to suffer the full, unmitigated consequences of their mistakes and deny them the ability to exert control over their own lives.

By: Progressive Conservative

Progressive Conservative — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:58:39 +0000

From Ames: …by ensuring that, when “mistakes are made,” they are made responsibly.

How do you ‘make a mistake responsibly’ ?

Also, I hardly think reducing funding for teen mothers from $5 million to $3.9 million is ‘slashing’.

By: Ames

Ames — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:23:31 +0000

Narc, well said!

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:21:02 +0000

Oneroi, hi. I’m the exception, I guess, who’s the one person saying abstinence is a bad choice and people can’t be happy with it. I base that on personal experience, having had that choice assigned to me though I wanted nothing to do with it. Made me miserable, and probably more bloodthirsty than is ideal.

Fornication is an inextricable part of people’s happiness. It’s a good and moral thing. Pregnancy and STD work against people’s happiness, that makes them bad things, and were there some intelligence responsible for them it would be an immoral one. The solution isn’t to try and prevent sex in order to prevent STDs and pregnancies, it’s to sever sex from STDs and pregnancy and put a nice Berlin Wall in between to keep them separate. Vaccination and comprehensive sex-ed work towards that. Abstinence propaganda… doesn’t.

By: Narc

Narc — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:30:43 +0000

Comprehensive sex-education exists to promote health, i.e. prevent disease and unwanted pregnancies. That's the goal of the programs and there really isn't any moral component to it. Abstinence-only programs exist to prevent sin, not disease. They don't care whether or not it prevents disease. They're attacking the sex itself. Frankly, I've heard things that suggest they consider STDs to be a feature, not a bug; in the arguments about the HPV vaccine, I've heard people argue that the possibility of getting cervical cancer might stop some women from having sex.

By: Oneiroi

Oneiroi — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:21:59 +0000

Whoa, hold it there.

I don’t think anyone is saying that abstinence is a bad choice or that people haven’t been happy with that choice.

But instead that if you’re someone who probably was raised with the idea of abstinence (and maybe abstinence only education) from a conservative family, and still you end up getting pregnant…doesn’t that illustrate “Democratic” point that the child should have been more properly educated so that it wouldn’t have happened in the first place? What was the other option? Teach abstinence only harder? Is that the right tactic instead?

And just an argument I’ve heard about the family matter versus a political one, if that’s a personal matter that should not be public, why are Republicans trying to legislate how a woman should choose to deal with their pregnancy?

I don’t know if I agree with that previous one 100%, but what I do think is that if you’re a politician and your life directly references political issues, or character issues (in John Edward’s case), you can’t really expect for it not to be reported and talked about.