A response to Bill O’Reilly attacking middle school children and the people who care for them
Sunday, October 21st, 2007Bill O’Reilly is at it again, crusading against an issue by providing half facts and truths.
The title of his most recent “Talking Points” column is titled “Birth Control Pills for 11-Year Old Girls.”
His temper tantrum takes aim at three Portland middle schools that house medical clinics aimed at treating children without access to appropriate health care. O’Reilly would have you believe that the clinics are handing out birth control pills like Halloween candy. Not so.
- Parents have to sign a consent form to have their child treated in the clinic. The form states the services offered at the clinic including, now, the distribution of birth control pills. This is just one service the clinic provides. It also offers dental, mental health and other services the kids could get if their parents could afford (or easily have access to) a pediatrician or internist. (New York Times)
- O’Reilly says birth control doesn’t prevent again disease. Guess what? The clinic also distributes condoms. Is he second guessing the medical staff that they don’t inform the girls that birth control doesn’t prevent against disease? Also, would O’Reilly prefer that these young women use neither condoms nor birth control pills? That’s like saying, “if she doesn’t have her partner use a condom, she deserves to get pregnant because she’s also going to contract a disease.”
- O’Reilly ignores statistics about teen and pre teen pregnancy. Did he mention the likelihood a teen mom will drop out of high school? How about her statistically eventual life of poverty supplemented by welfare? How about the likelihood that her children will end up having babies as teens? What about the statistic that teenage moms have babies with low birth weights?
When I entered middle school I was two months past my 12th birthday, 4’10, overweight, with a bad perm, braces (the clear kind that turned yellow instead of metallic), red oversized glasses, acne and bangs with no style. I was going through puberty.
Sitting next to me in homeroom was a 14 year old girl who was 5’6, very overweight, and was spending her second year in 7th grade. At the end of the year she earned a social promotion to high school so that she wouldn’t turn 16 in seventh or eighth grades. She was post pubescent.
I have no idea what happened to this girl. I do know that our lives were very different. Would I have taken advantage of the distribution of birth control pills at my middle school just because they had them? Absolutely not. Sex was the farthest thing from my mind in 1989. However, I did not represent every student at my middle school. Some girls might have benefited from a clinic at our school. I was not one of them. In fact, many girls in my high school walked across the stage pregnant. I also don’t know what happened to them. I hope they and their babies are great. The statistics predict otherwise.
To imply that providing birth control pills will somehow make girls sexually active is simply ridiculous. That’s like saying allowing the distribution of the flu vaccine will encourage every person who gets it to be exposed to the flu.
Bill O’Reilly should visit the school that I spend 30 hours observing in 2001. It was a school for pregnant teenagers (some as young as 12). Despite their teachers’ attempts to help them graduate from high school, they knew they were fighting an uphill battle. How can you expect a young girl to think about the causes of WWI when soon she will be responsible for a young life when she is so young herself?
Once again is taking an issue from which he is completely isolated and using it boost his ratings and even sell his book:
“It is ironic that the week my book "Cultural Warrior" comes out in paperback, intense culture battles erupt across the country. First the sacrilege in
San Francisco now the pill for sixth graders.” (O’Reilly)
How sick is it that this is how he makes a living: preying on poor middle school children who need healthcare. The Cultural Warrior is making money committing war crimes.
