Children Having Children (Updated x2)
[Guest post by DRJ]
“A 14-year-old Houston-area girl gave birth to a full-term baby in a bathroom at her junior high school on Wednesday, then tried to flush it down the toilet, killing the infant, police said.
“The baby was alive when it was born,” said Lt. Eric Freed with the Baytown Police Department.” The girl attempted to flush the child down the toilet, and the child died as a result.”
The baby was reportedly full-term and the girl tried to flush it down the toilet after it cried.
“Harris County prosecutors will not file charges against a teenager who delivered a stillborn fetus in the bathroom of a Continental Airlines jet, authorities said today.
A cleaning crew found the fetus in a bathroom trash disposal late Sunday afternoon after Flight 433 arrived at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, police said.
Preliminary results from the autopsy on Monday indicated the stillborn fetus was not viable, police said.
The 14-year-old girl who delivered the fetus was returning to Houston from a school field trip in New York. Police questioned the girl and a 14-year-old boy believed to be the father.
The girl told police she didn’t know she was pregnant.”
UPDATE 4/3/2008: The CDC reports 1-in-50 infants are abused or neglected. After reading the above stories, that doesn’t surprise me.
UPDATE 4/3/2008: The Houston Chronicle reports that the girl went to the school nurse because of stomach pains and was sent back to class, but she went to the bathroom instead. Apparently no one knew or realized she was pregnant.
— DRJ
Because kids who can’t keep their pants on are OF COURSE responsible enough to use birth control properly….
Foxfier (74f1c8) — 4/2/2008 @ 8:23 pmI was conversing with a pediatrician this weekend and this came up. Her only shock was that it was should be news that 14 year old girls could become pregnant; she’s had pregnant ten-year-olds in her practice. I wasn’t the only one whose jaw dropped at that.
htom (412a17) — 4/2/2008 @ 8:24 pmhtom – I remember when I was in grade school, hearing about the pregnant 9 year old over in an Arabic country. She had been married for a few years….
Foxfier (74f1c8) — 4/2/2008 @ 8:31 pmWhy isn’t his villainous young woman being charged with murder? Wasn’t the child alive? Didn’t the “mother” kill the child?
DEMETRI (c3f397) — 4/2/2008 @ 11:06 pmDEMETRI –
Foxfier (74f1c8) — 4/3/2008 @ 1:25 amThey’re probably waiting for proof the kid was born alive, and drowned or died of violence.
THEN they can have what is sure to be a major fight as “pro-choice” people holler that any action against the murderer is somehow an attempt to prevent “choice.” (I hate to say it, but wait and see….)
I teach 8th grade, and I currently have a girl in my class who is 5 months pregnant.
gahrie (5ae14f) — 4/3/2008 @ 5:30 amNever before has birth control and abortion been more available, but never before has teen sex been more accepted.
There will always be terrible situations like this, we don’t know what kind of life these girls had (I’m sure there is a lot more to the stories), but the message teens get that sex can be had without consequences is a lie.
Adult responsibility follows adult actions. This is not a function of government policy, this is a function of life.
Amphipolis (fdbc48) — 4/3/2008 @ 5:37 amYes, amphi…
And, we don’t seem to be holding people, teens or not, accountable for their “adult” decisions.
I used exactly that idea to teach my daughter as she grew…”If you make adult choices, you will pay adult prices.” She worked very hard to stay a child….and has managed to survive to make it to 23, where she is somewhat prepared to make adult choices, and can pay adult prices….
reff (bff229) — 4/3/2008 @ 6:06 ami w*rked at a hospital here in LA, that i characterized as “a 2nd world hospital located in the 3rd world part of a 1st world city”. one of my responsibilities was support for the L&D floor.
the only thing unusual about a young teen (or younger) pregnancy was the different steps/precautions that had to be taken due to body size, etc. the fact that a child was pregnant was so common as to be unremarkable.
the most ridiculous manifestation of this was a woman (mid 20’s) who was in having (another) baby. she was telling the nurses that she was about to become a grandmother: it seems that the son she had when she was 12 had knocked up his slightly older girlfriend. she was pleased…..
then there was the facility where we were mixing neonate doses of penicillin injection for a 5 day old…… it seems that when the 12 year old mother gave birth, she passed on the syphilis she was carrying. i got *really* drunk that night.
redc1c4 (a877b7) — 4/3/2008 @ 10:00 amredc1c4 –
You sound like a lawyer friend of mine. His dad owned part of the ranch my family runs.
For two years he was in the Juvie courts.
He would come over and work so hard that after the first weekend– when he went into borderline-shock– my folks watched him very, very carefully. (He refused to drink except with my dad, for that matter….)
Foxfier (74f1c8) — 4/3/2008 @ 10:13 amIt seemed like beating the crud out of himself did clean out some of the horror he saw– once his eldest became a teen, they finally moved him.
She could have had an abortion 10 minutes before delivery. Why the outrage the she wasn’t charged with murder? It was just poor timing.
Bryant (c97363) — 4/3/2008 @ 10:19 amReff,
That’s been our approach, too. Our sons know we love them no matter what but if a girlfriend gets pregnant, they will be getting married and going to work full-time to provide for their new family.
DRJ (a431ca) — 4/3/2008 @ 10:24 amFoxfier wrote: Because kids who can’t keep their pants on are OF COURSE responsible enough to use birth control properly…
This leads me to one of the dumbest bumper sticker slogans in history: “If you can’t trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?”
I rarely see that one any more, and if it is anywhere, usually it is on one of those vehicles where the rear of the vehicle is a mosaic of new and fading decals from every imaginable leftist cause. I have to figure that one lib asked another at the local print shop, “Exactly what does that mean?” and the other couldn’t answer, so they stopped ordering them.
L.N. Smithee (e1f2bf) — 4/3/2008 @ 10:45 amDRJ, that’s the same thing I told my boys: wrt marriage. I told them both that if they were ever to impregnate a girlfriend, they’d better make darn sure she was really attractive because they were going to be looking at her across the breakfast table every morning for the rest of their lives.
Lesley (d671ab) — 4/3/2008 @ 1:16 pmI’ve updated the post to include a Houston Chronicle report that the girl who gave birth in the bathroom had sought help from the school nurse.
DRJ (a431ca) — 4/3/2008 @ 8:48 pmmy guess would be that she was, to be delicate, stocky to begin with, and that’s why no one noticed the pregnancy…..
/just a swag.
redc1c4 (a877b7) — 4/3/2008 @ 11:22 pmredc1c4 –
If she were stocky, then she would be unlikely to have been unable to have a period for over half a year (generally a symptom of, well, borderline starvation that isn’t exactly uncommon in school girls) and thus have no idea she was preggers.
Foxfier (74f1c8) — 4/3/2008 @ 11:49 pmOn the gross side…I challenged my husband to bet that the father *isn’t* over 18…he passed….
What does anyone else guess?
Foxfier (74f1c8) — 4/3/2008 @ 11:55 pm