You must be making a joke. Live and let live? You have just spent the whole page bitching about contraception and telling me that the best way to stop teen pregnancy is to demonise those who engage in premarital sex.

The cognitive dissonance displayed is so astounding I can only assume you are kidding.

It seems that the sisterhood have total control. The outlook is bleak.

The Family Court in its wisdom has decided that any child, but especially any female child, is always, invariably, better off with the mother. When finally (after five years) the court decided that the mother had to undergo rehab before she could have her children, their care defaulted to the grandmother.

Men, you see, are seen as some combination of clumsy, inept, cold and unloving, with possibly overtones of paedophilia thrown in if we want custody of a female child. At least in the eyes of the exclusively female Legal Aid lawyers who are appointed as “Independent” Children’s Lawyers in the Family Court, and whose recommendations the busy judges (whose numbers are far too low to cope) take without question.

When a client of mine whom I was assisting in obtaining a restraining order went to see them on a Family Court matter I was told I could not come into the meeting because “no men are allowed on our floor”.

So I cannot take the girl anywhere. Nor can her father, who gets a couple of hours of supervised access a week, for which he must drive an hour there and an hour back because mum can live wherever the hell she damn well pleases. He’s just lucky, given the size of WA, that she hasn’t shifted a plane ride away.

Typically National Socialist.

Problem sorted.

Conservatives on the other hand look to where the pathology isn’t and ask why and whether that can be applied more genrally.

That’s a very good way of putting it.

It all comes down to what those around you honor and what they don’t

On that we’re in complete agreement. I tried to inculcate those values into my children and though the eldest two have not married (which I cannot criticise as nor have I) they have had their children to one partner and are both in longstanding and (to all appearances anyway) stable relationships.

But how on earth do you take a third generation welfare child, like one whose father I’m working to assist at present. The grandmother left one child in England but brought the daughter out here. Gave her a patchy upbringing (we’ve already discovered granny was working while claiming benefits, she refuses to undergo a hair test despite the Family Court order, she was raided by police who found a hydroponic cannabis operation which of course “wasn’t hers” but the fault of the live-in boyfriend du jour…) and is a drunk. The man the little girl calls “Pop” because he was with granny when the little one was born is long gone… that was two boyfriends back.

So the little girl’s mum unsurprisingly turned out the same way, except her choice of substance is speed. She has told the court-appointed psychologist that “I’m not giving up the drugs, I love them too much”. Her “boyfriend” is whoever will give her drugs to sleep with her, including occasionally the fathers of her other children, who drift in and out of the scene (she also has 3 boys).

Who will instill in that little girl the values you’ve instilled in yours? An “abstinence class” at school?! You really think that’s going to do the trick?

I don’t know what will. I just think loading her purse with condoms from about age 11 would probably be a wise idea. It probably won’t stop the inevitable, but nor will a class or two advising her not to emulate the primary female role models in her life.

She’s 6. She’s delightful. And if you know how to save her, I’m listening.

I have a little bad news for you my friend – see while your “liberated” views have gained hold among the cultural leaders of the west and every thing seems peachy for now apart from a desperately degraded underclass for you to wring your hands over, the crunch is coming because your decayed and degenrate culture is composed of a rapidly aging population who have contrcepted and aborted their successors out of the picture.

But nature abhors a vacuum and all those children your kind didn’t have are being raised by the followers of the prophet who as their numbers increase will soon have the upper hand and the democratic right to set public policy.

And if you think my Christian free will, live and let live philosophy is draconian, you are just gonna love Sharia Law

“Abstinence education has been a political football for years with people with agendas trying to “prove” it doesn’t work.”

It has already been proven not to work. Study after study after study shows it, the demographics show it and even it’s staunchest supporters have had to face up to the fact that Abstinence education has failed and that, while impressing abstinence is 100% effective, they now have to teach methods of contraception and sexual health.

You’re living in the past.

“It is culture, if the idea of having a child out of wedlock is shameful, if sleeping around is treated with scorn and those that do consdiered as trash by your group, it don’t happen so much.”

Thanks but I think your vision of society that scorns those who don’t meet your narrow preconceptions is fucking atrocious. You’re anachronism, pusing your views on others. You wanna hold those views go right ahead – you have freedom of speech, freedom of belief but don’t expect the rest of us to dance to your insipid, authoritarian and factually incorrect views.

And here’s one for the boys: you can’t bugger off, you and your family will just have to pay for your share of the child / mistake, even if the taxpayer has to have you cutting gorse.

See the opponents to this ‘draconian’ (read ‘standard’ until very very recently) measure think people at the more… vulnerable end of society will just end up with ten kids anyway and they will all die somehow. That’s because they actually think poor uneducated people are stupid, and also faintly disgusting.

Well, I don’t believe this. I actually think 99% of women (and men) are quite smart enough to know free money shouldn’t be turned down. Were that money to be stopped tomorrow (or more realistically phased out), the snapping of legs being closed would reverberate loudly round the bedrooms of this nation.

Were this to happen (it’s got to at some point) dare I say it, these poor bloody neglected kids we keep so impotently bemoaning the fates of will surely stop being born in such staggering numbers.

Conservatives on the other hand look to where the pathology isn’t and ask why and whether that can be applied more genrally.

Abstinence education has been a political football for years with people with agendas trying to “prove” it doesn’t work. But when you delve into their surveys there is always the joker.

A famous one in Pennsyvania where there are lots of Amish kids found a hand wavy excuse as to why to they should be excluded for example, while includung a group of African American girls whose older sisters had all had pregnancies and who were enrolled for a voluntary sex ed course based on abstinence – most of these girls never attended it being voluntary. This is the way it is done, usually not so overtly of course.

But the answers don’t lie in number crunching statistics – from the getgo you would say that the chances of my girls having teenage pregnancies was low, not zero but you’ld know from primary school that they were not likely to and they didn’t.

It is culture, if the idea of having a child out of wedlock is shameful, if sleeping around is treated with scorn and those that do consdiered as trash by your group, it don’t happen so much.

It all comes down to what those around you honor and what they don’t

It shouldn’t be too hard. Let me try again. Sexual education which teaches only abstinence from sex has resulted, unequivocally, in higher teen pregnancy rates and has had no effect on STD rates which is why abstinence only education states are dropping the programs in favour of other approaches.

So – I repeat: Abstinence only education doesn’t work.

Use your brain scrubone. It is easy.

The trick in policy making is to figure out to what extent – if at all – the variables inherent in studies undertaken in the UK or the US translate to NZ and then predicting the effect of setting policy at a certain point on the “abstinence education only” to “free contraception for all” line.

Exactly. Understand what achieves what and why it achieves that. Not manipulating the data to try and prove what you’re ideologically opposed to is the “best” way.

Only 35 women took up the Government’s offer of free long-term contraception for beneficiaries in the first five months

Can anyone provide the figure on how many women took up the Government’s offer of free long-term benefits for unsupported mothers over the same period ?

However your argument is piss-weak and totally unconvincing.

How are homos getting married going to affect unmarried unsupported straight women? Do you think they are not married or supported because all the good men are taken…. by other men ?

Poor effort Andrei, try harder 1/10

And off we go at a tangent that has nothing to do with the topic of the post. Damn it, I was genuinely enjoying reading both sides of the debate because, as I said above, research suggests both sides can be right, depending on a wide range of variables.

The trick in policy making is to figure out to what extent – if at all – the variables inherent in studies undertaken in the UK or the US translate to NZ and then predicting the effect of setting policy at a certain point on the “abstinence education only” to “free contraception for all” line.

Surely teh gayz have taken up enough of everyone’s debating time?

If the religious conservatives want to preserve family values then that is what they should do and not be distracted chasing rainbows by attacking gays. Gays are not part of the traditional family unit, the conservatives should leave gays alone and focus on building what they believe in, not attacking what they do not believe in.

Translation: I’ve got no idea what religious conservatives actually care about but they seem to talk a lot about gays, so they must be ignoring other problems.

Sure, whatever.

The issue of gay marriage incites far more comment than the issue of unmarried/unsupported women pumping out kids. I see far more social harm caused by hetrosexual women, than by homos of either sex.

The reason why gay marriage is on the radar at this time is because they are about to legislate for it.

And the issue is closely related to the “unmarried/unsupported women” issue because marriage as a social institution has at its very heart the idea that it reduces the number of “unmarried/unsupported women” by enciuraging men and women to bond together before having children!!!! So that there are not “unmarried/unsupported women” when they are raising their children – Duh

That is why gay marriage is about a stupid an idea as can be imagined