Time Immortal

On one hand, increased birthrates among young British women could be a very good thing for Britain in the medium-to-long term; the more “native born” Britons there are now, the fewer potentially subversive, potentially violent immigrants Britan will have to import, some number of years down the line, in order to make up the population.

On the other hand, going through a pregnancy and raising a child are not exactly the sorts of things that young girls — I’m thinking here of 12- to 17-year olds — are usually well-equipped, mentally and financially, to deal with. And it’s a travesty that the rates of teenage pregnancy in Britain, as in many Western nations, are as high as they are. Of course, the blame for those swelling (ahem) pregnancy rates among teens never gets placed in the correct place (i.e. at the feet of comprehensive sex-ed, which has only served to, as Kathy Shaidle puts it, “decouple sex from physical realities”).

But as conflicted as I might be about the implications of such a vastly increased rate of teenage pregnancy in Britain, I’m of one mind about at least one proposed solution to the problem: mandatory temporary sterilizations.

With teenage pregnancies vastly increased in number in the last decade, the authorities — in an apparent attempt to rectify the problem — have encouraged teenagers to engage in oral sex (instead of copulation), and are now examining the idea of compulsory sex lessons for 5 year olds.  As if Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is playing out before our eyes, government minister Dawn Primarolo has even suggested that teenage girls should be sterilized.  That way they would be free to have sex with anyone they want, or don’t want.

I think this would be a case of “solving the wrong problem.”

Somewhere along the line, it seems like our society gave up on the notion that it could expect its teenagers to restrain themselves where sex was concerned, switching its attitude from “they shouldn’t” to “well, they’re going to anyway.” I think that’s a massive betrayal of the younger generation by the older, and I don’t imagine that continuing in that attitude is going to do anything to solve the problems that said attitude has caused. Forcing young girls to get temporary sterilizations solves the wrong problem because it still assumes that teenagers can’t be expected to take a pass on sexual activity until such time as they are ready and able to cope with some of its natural implications; it likewise absolves teens of any responsibility in that regard.

Take away responsibility from anyone in any other situation and the result will be chaos. Why do people think that doing so in regard to sexuality will not have a similar effect?