here is a line of argument that goes like this: “They are going to have sex any way; so we might as well give them condoms or the pill”.  Needless to say, this argument is woefully problematic.  For instance, no one would think to argue “Well, they are going to murder any way; so we might as well give them a gun; otherwise, they will steal guns”.  Of course, there is a fundamental difference here in that there is nothing in principal wrong with sex; whereas murder is morally wrong, period.  But there is a most important respect in which either case raises a significant issue, namely the issue of condoning behavior.

Legally, of course, the liberty to do something does not constitute condoning it.  After all, people should not drink if they have significant problems with alcohol consumption.  Yet, they nonetheless have the legal liberty to drink.  A legal liberty in no way constitutes a form of social condoning. 

In law, adults have lots of liberties and the idea is that they should bring to the exercise of each liberty the judgment that doing so is or is not a good thing.  Sometimes, we rightly conclude that we should never exercise a given liberty, as would be the case if we cannot at all handle alcohol consumption.  Sometimes, we rightly conclude that the exercise of a liberty is inappropriate only in this instance, as when we make the assessment it would better that we not make a given purchase at this point in time.

In the State of Maine, there are middle schools that have proposed giving the birth control pill to the female students who attend the school.  To be sure, the idea is to do this with the permission of the student’s parents.  But if that does not work, there are the so-called special circumstances that allow birth control to be administered to a child in the name of the child’s privacy.  I think that this is called undercutting parental authoritity, but let us set this matter aside. 

Now, bearing in mind that children in middle school are between the ages of 11 and 13 years of age, the first observation I want to make is that for children of this age permission to obtain the birth control pill is seen by them as none other than parental and school approval.  And there is the rub.  No parent should be approving of the pill for an 11 or a 13 year old.  No school should be doing so.

Besides, giving the pill to a 13 year old presupposes something that seems implausible at the outset, namely adequate maturity on the child’s part to administer the pill in the way that it is supposed to be administered.  Arguably, if a 13 year old had that kind of maturity, then the issue of using birth control would not be there in the first place. 

Then there is this matter.  One of the most important things that a parent can instill in their children, and schools should underwrite, is a measure of self-control.  By definition, to have self-control is to have the ability to resist strong desires the satisfaction of which would be harmful. 

If this is right, precisely what parental permission for an 11-13 year old to use the pill amounts to is telling the child to give in to her sexual desires.  This is not only the wrong lesson to teach a child a young girl, this is to prepare her ever so poorly for the future. 

No one has ever lived well who has not been able to exercise considerable self-control over giving into her or his desires.  And it is safe to say that no one ever shall. 

The issue is not whether sex is a wonderful thing.  Surely it is.  But there is a time and a place for it.  There is no respect in which 11-13 years old is the right time to be having sex. 

And if this consideration were not enough, what about the issue of failed birth control measures?  Do we just treat giving an 11-13 an old abortion rather like giving her a haircut?  It goes without saying that no one that age should be forced to have a child.  Absolutely not.  Assume, then, that abortion is the right option.  Alas, this assumption does not in any way trivialize the impact of performing the procedure of an abortion on girls between the ages of 11 and 13.. 

Measured fear and shame can be a good thing.  And modernity has lost sight of this truth.  The young have to contend with raging hormones and a multitude of desires the satisfaction of which seem ever so appealing.  Measured fear and shame can be a formidable dam in helping the young to resist a wealth of desires.  Measured fear and shame can work where reason alone does not. 

It is often the case that reason does not work for full-fledged adults.  So it is just plain silly to suppose that reason will readily work for 11-13 year olds. 

If at the age of 11 years old a child is a moral fortress-in-the-making, then parents and the school should be the moral moorings that buttress that fortress.  The very idea of distributing birth control pills to girls in middle school is tantamount to abandoning that role, be it the parents or the school who does so.

And if these considerations were not enough, there is this.  We are supposed to be teaching young girls that the value of their bodies is not simply a function of their ability to be pleasing boys.  I think that this idea goes by the name of feminism.  Accordingly, I would have thought that teaching young girls to feel good about themselves when they say “No” to the sexual advances of boys would have first priority. 

If this is right, then there is a fundamental respect in which parents reveal themselves to be unfit in signing the permission for their daughter in middle school to receive birth control pills.  This is rather like giving one’s child permission to walk across a field replete with landmines.  It is impossible for parents to do that and really be concerned with the well-being of their child.  For the 11-13 old girl, having to be concerned with taking the pill is none other one fundamental concern too many. 

There will always be under-aged children who have sex.  But this is hardly a reason for either parents or schools or society in general to condone such behavior, or even to give the impression that they condone it.  After all, there will always be children who drop out of school or who take drugs, from which it most surely does not follow that we should merely be accepting of it. 

There is a difference between excoriating condemnation and strong disapproval.  There can little doubt that in the past some parents went overboard and that social scorn overshot the mark.  The corrective here lies not in withdrawing disapproval entirely when children do wrong.  Quite the contrary, even in adulthood it turns out that shame and disapproval play a significant role in buttressing our moral fortress. 

Over the years, I have been blessed to forge some wonderful ties.  And while I take myself to be an extremely strong person, it does not bother me at all to acknowledge that my will to do what is right has been mightily strengthened by my wish not to disappoint those who have believed in me.  From a public radio figure such as Dr. Laura Schlessinger, with whom I once communicated on a regular basis, to my Ph. D. and undergraduate students: I am not worse off given that I would not want to be the object of their disapproval.  Quite the contrary, I have found succor and strength in precisely the fact that they have all had very high expectations of me. 

Nothing is more corrosive of the life of those in their formative years than low expectations on the part of parents and schools.  How on earth will children ever have high moral and intellectual expectations of themselves, if those raise and train children (that is, parents and teachers) do not have high expectations of children?  The simple truth is that distributing the pill in schools, with or without the permission of parents, is rather like taking a bull-horn and announcing in the school yard that one expects the females to become sluts.

None of this requires having a puritanical regarding sex.  Rather, it requires that adults, be they parents or teachers, accept the responsibility of inculcating in children those values that will underwrite the reality of children becoming wholesome adults.  If, as many would suppose, society is going to hell in a hand-basket, the explanation might very well be that we have paved that very road with the lives of children by failing to be morally and intellectually responsible in raising them.  The motto of the day, then, might be this: To fail the children of a society is to destroy that society.