Ann Coulter makes fun of the Planned Parenthood reaction to NYC’s campaign to stigmatize teen pregnancy. Excerpt:
Posters are popping up in subway stations and bus stops giving statistics about teen pregnancy that show cute little kids saying things like, “Honestly, Mom … chances are he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?” and “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen.”
(Based on a recent CBS report, the kid could add, “Then again, I’m in the New York City public school system, so even if I graduate I won’t be able to read.”)
It’s one thing to stigmatize “Big Gulp” drinkers, but liberals are hopping mad at this attempt to stigmatize teen pregnancy, 90 percent of which is unwed. To put it another way, if you’re a New York teen with a distended belly these days, it had better be because you’re pregnant.
Planned Parenthood’s Haydee Morales complained that the ads are creating “stigma” and “negative public opinions about teen pregnancy.” (I’m pretty sure that’s the basic idea.)
Instead, Morales suggested “helping teens access health care, birth control and high-quality sexual and reproductive health education.” Like the kind they got before becoming pregnant, you mean? Are you new here, Haydee?
Whole thing here. Hey, when she’s right, she’s right.
Hector_St_Clare 
cecelia 
J.J. Gonzalez Gonzalez 
Franklin Evans 
Re: What color is the sky in your world? Shame has been quite successful in changing behavior throughout the ages.
I agree that La Lubu’s comment is pretty silly. Shame is a powerful way to change behaviour. More generally, the sense that you’re being watched and under scrutiny is a powerful way to change behaviour (one of the most powerful). My problem with this shaming teen moms campaign isn’t that it wouldn’t work, it’s that it would work too well, towards a completely undesirable end. It would encourage more of these teenagers to have abortions. Having more teen moms in our society is a price I’m happy to pay in order to have less abortions. And I’d point out, too, that since upper-middle-class liberal-feminist women tend not to be having *enough* children, I find it hard to be too critical of these teenagers for keeping up our national birth rate.
I don’t think that having a baby should be treated as something immoral or worthy of shame and stigma. On the contrary, women who choose not to have an abortion- whether they’re 17 or 40- deserve to be praised, celebrated and supported, for choosing life. I think having kids as a teen is very often a bad idea (though I think the average age of first childbearing, for women, should be lower than it is today, not higher). But you know, often it works out fine. And we could ensure that it worked out better, if we had a better social support system for young mothers. It’s certainly not the worst thing in the world.
Re: But I think the growing acceptance of teen and unwed motherhood in general during my lifetime — mostly not in the professional classes, as noted — is the understanding and fear that doing this encourages abortions, that if you are asking young women to choose life, you can’t also say “and we will shame you forever for doing so.” So instead women get celebrated to a certain extent for getting pregnant and not aborting (and we seem to have given up on adoption as a choice for most, which I think is sad).
Adoption is a tricky business, often incredibly traumatic both for the mother and the child. (Although the increasing trend towards open adoptions is a good thing, and needs to be encouraged). Other than that, though, I totally agree with you. More women having children in non-ideal situations, is a price we need to pay for having less abortions.
Anyone who’s followed my comments on this blog knows that I have just about zero liking or fondness for Planned Parenthood. I think they’re a pretty disgusting organisation, all in all. But I have just about equal disdain for the cultural-elite types who think that having a baby too young is something only trashy sl*ts and losers do.