Fluoride isn’t the only thing to add
NOW THAT SPRING IS IN FULL FLOWER, the daffodils are out and the urges of a young man and woman turn to skimpy clothing, playing on the beach in the sand and forgetting about the responsibilities of being an adult. Heck, even some of us, who aren’t all that young, are having those thoughts.
It’s that primal urge for communion with another that we know all too well, that causes so many problems in our society. I was in court last week and the family courts are just overrun with children who are raising children. It’s simply appalling.
There is a very good reason for it all. A failure of our society to be mature about something as basic as sex, and sex education. It is the tyranny of religion that has brought us to the juncture of mature stable people trying to determine for immature, unstable children, how to raise their young.
All it takes is for someone to spend one morning in a family law court to see that there are significant problems in the messages that we are transmitting to our youth about the costs, demands and impact of a child on a person’s life.
People frequently take a position, and no matter how wrong it is, they will continue to defend it. In business negotiations this is called fighting for your investment, and commonly people will continue to throw good money after bad, rather than cut their losses. When kids are involved, the parents are each “fighting for their kid” and thus, in their minds, the investment is so huge, that they cannot see the big picture.
They lack the ability to differentiate between real issues, and illusory ones. Frequently we are told that the other party is immature, a bad parent, has a skank for girl-friend/boyfriend, doesn’t know how to parent. The list is endless. The problem for most of these people, and frankly the younger they are, the more likely they are to not have the tools to navigate the rough waters of parenting and divorce/split ups well, is one of immaturity.
Many children are conceived with no thought of the financial, emotional and time commitments necessary to raise even a moderately well equipped adult. This is because the religious fanatics have deemed sex dirty, and immoral outside the blessed bonds of marriage and make contraception a shameful product to purchase and use.
I think it is high time that the powers that be in our fair city, take matters in their own hands and do something proactive for once about the skyrocketing teen pregnancy issue. They have proven that they have the ability and intestinal fortitude for the fight over fluoride in our water. They have shown that they have the knowledge of what is best for our society by fluoridating our water and regulating our driving speeds, and now it is time for them to take over the procreative process.
It is time for this city to start putting a contraceptive in our water. The antidote should be freely available, upon merely showing up at some local pharmacy, and asking the pharmacist to provide it. It should be a no-cost antidote that has no age requirement, no parental notifications and should be marketed to the general public as their right.
Some will say that I am crazy for such a suggestion. Others will scream that I am waging war on the family and infringing on a persons right to procreate. Hogwash I say.
If we want to truly bring back the value to the family it once had, if we want to build a society that is stable and where the citizenry has a lower incidence of emotional abuse, physical abuse and stable two-parent households, we should make the act of procreation one that requires a modicum of forethought.
We are not living in an age when a woman needs to have 13 children because half of them wont live past two, and half of those who remain will be killed in a war. We live in a time of relative peace and prosperity, and we should modify our social mores and actions based on it.
Will this work? Yes, we have the technology if wanted to do it. Will it ever happen? No. We’re not ready as a society to address the reality that people enjoy each other, sometimes merely for pleasure or escape, and that sometimes it results in another life. Besides, we’d rather brand fathers as deadbeats and make moms into welfare moms, and then condemn them as inferior people.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 15, 2008. Read the original PDF.