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July 08, 2009
Double-Dipping Teenage Girls Earning Tuition Money?
The University of North Carolina has launched a new scheme for encouraging teenage girls not to get pregnant: educated 12-18 year-olds and PAY them $1 a day not to get pregnant.
Math check: assume a maximum of 7 years (12 through 18) times $365 a year equals $2555 maximum.So, $3,000? Maybe one of the girls, when she turned 18, took a trip to India to sell her eggs.
Posted by James M. Kushiner at 02:03 PM | Permalink
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James Kushiner: "educate 12-18 year-olds and PAY them $1 a day not to get pregnant."
If these teenagers get an abortion, do they lose the $1/day?
In contrast, what do you think of this account: "My First Abortion Party" cited here with these excerpts:
""What are you going to do?" Unnecessary question, really -- a conversational life vest, used when you’re sputtering for something to say. We knew the answer. Maggie, a 22-year-old college senior with no intention of bringing a child into the world yet, was going to have an abortion. She told us that she had already made up her mind; she had even determined the time, date and location. A better question might have been, "How are you going to pay for it?"
She answered that one before we had a chance to ask. "We’re having a party Friday to raise money," Maggie said. "You guys are obviously invited."
An abortion party. For the price of whatever we were willing to donate, she explained, we could partake of baked goods, beer and dancing. It was going to start at 10 p.m. at Maggie’s.
Ali and I arrived around 11, only half aware of the irony of being "late" to an abortion party. Walking in, we were bludgeoned with a blast of hot air, followed by the tangy stink of dance floor revelry. Someone had taken a red bed sheet and hung it below a light fixture to resemble a giant womb. Every so often, a dancer’s head or arm or dreadlock would brush against one of its smooth folds, creating a rippling effect. "Let’s Go Crazy" by Prince was playing.
As Ali went off to find Maggie, I sat down and struck up a conversation with Eli, the three-year-old son of one of the partygoers. ... Even though I thought the presence of a young child at an abortion party was a little bizarre, nobody else seemed to acknowledge (or care about) this contradiction. Instead, the rest of the guests just took turns fawning over him, exchanging high fives and swooshing him through the air. He, along with everyone else, was having a blast.
I saw Maggie’s boyfriend, sitting near the kitchen, wearing rainbow suspenders and looking uncomfortably alone. As it turns out, he had been the object of a lot of vitriol from Maggie’s friends -- women who thought that he should not have had anything to do with the abortion."
Read the rest of this sad account.
Posted by: Truth Unites... and Divides | Jul 8, 2009 2:15:51 PM
TUAD,
Not that I expect much better from AlterNet, but that article had a fantastic story--heartbreaking yes, but illustrative--lost in the intellectually lazy front of "nuance."
"There's just so many issues to discuss, and people get all emotional, so we don't have real dialogue. But...but I guess there's a place for anger? Maybe? Because women are systematically oppressed and we call it the norm? They taught me that in school, anyway."
Ugh.
Posted by: Michael | Jul 8, 2009 3:35:58 PM
Actually, the readers' comments on the UNC story are the most saddening thing about this whole subject -- they reveal such moral confusion.
Posted by: Wolf Paul | Jul 9, 2009 1:37:27 AM
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