Here’s a Jeopardy question for you: The category is “Housing;” the answer is “Girls in Crisis.” The question is “Who is Florence Crittenton?” It’s doubtful anyone would press their buzzer on that one.
Back in the 1895 Charles Crittenton of Knoxville, TN founded a home for “girls in crisis,” a euphemism for unwed pregnant girls. He named it in memory of his daughter, Florence. It prospered during the early part of the 20th century and is still in existence, although its mission is now treating adolescents with addiction and mental health problems. Today, unwanted pregnancies are handled quite differently.
Older readers may recall a high school girl who suddenly moved to “live with grandma” in a distant city. Nine months later, she returned to school, apparently no worse for the experience, but many must have wondered into old age what became of the child to whom she gave birth.
Many things have changed since those semi-halcyon days. While birth control in the form of condoms has been available for centuries, they were never popular. The packaging read “For Prevention of Disease Only.”
When birth control pills became available in the 1960s unplanned pregnancies in married couples decreased dramatically, but less so in the unmarried youth who had trouble asking their mothers to share the pill.
To the astonishment of many another remedy presented itself in abortion on demand. Roe v Wade in 1973 ruled it unconstitutional for a state to ban abortion. That took the problem of an unwanted pregnancy out of the hands of the back alley operators with their coat hangers and protected licensed physicians from jail terms for terminating a pregnancy.
Catholic hospitals were different. In the OR dressing room of such institutions there was a sign on the wall forbidding the performance of abortion under any circumstance, even to save the life of the mother.
My, how the times have changed! There have been tens of millions of abortions done since that historic Supreme Court decision. Who can know how many Einsteins, Presidents, Nobel Prize winners, or just plain, ordinary worthwhile people have been suctioned into oblivion in the last fifty years.
This is not a diatribe in the Pro-Life, Pro-Choice discussion. If there is anything that hasn’t been said on that subject, I would be surprised. The number of people who have changed their position based on the arguments of the other side is miniscule.
No, this is a discussion about changing attitudes and social mores. It is an enormously complex problem which cuts across the entire fabric of society. Even in the past few decades the facts are moving in the wrong direction. What was a disgrace a half century ago now causes not an eye blink. A study in 2011 showed that 62% of women between the age of 20 and 24 who had recently had a child were unmarried. The rate of such occurrences has increased by 80% since 1980, 20% of that occurring between 2002 and 2007, according to Huffington Post Women (January 12, 2014).
How can such a seismic shift be explained? One would have thought with the easy availability of birth control pills, condoms free in virtually all college dorms, and the “morning after” pill available OTC even to minors, the opposite would be true.
The answers are multiple and complex but here a few that play a major role. The public’s permissive attitude about sex, the ready availability of willing partners, the loss of inhibition and restraint in the presence of drugs and alcohol, the idea among teenagers that if one is not sexually active by age 16 there must be something wrong with you, and the totally blasé attitude about the consequences of pregnancy.
While the above factors, and many more, come into play with the irresponsible use of sex, the consequences can and should be life -long. Particularly in teenagers this is not even on their radar. As a counselor told me she was speechless when a second-year college student client reported she had already had two abortions and is preparing for her third.
In the face of such arrant idiocy what happens in the future with Roe v Wade is the least of our worries. Abortion should never be the remedy for stupidity. There are certainly cases where it is an option but as the default for accidental pregnancy it says a lot about who we are. Until that changes, the future of a meaningful society is on the line . . . that’s what is really in jeopardy and it is not a game.
– Hayden Hollingsworth
