Ante-natal classes

[Gob]

Schools should run ante-natal classes for pregnant pupils, Government advisers said yesterday.

The courses would reach out to gymslip mums too embarrassed to see their GP or local clinics, they claimed.
Pupils would be able to skip lessons for the sessions at their schools and sixth-form colleges. Critics lambasted the proposal, saying it would normalise teenage pregnancy and make it more common than ever.

Britain already has the highest rates in Western Europe, with more than 41,000 babies born to women under the age of 18 every year. That figure is twice as high as in Germany, three times the level of France and six times that of the Netherlands.

But the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence is advising that schools in areas where teenage pregnancy is rife should hold classes to help young girls deal with labour and motherhood. Nice cites concerns that pregnant girls are deterred from going to see their GP by the fear of being sneered at by the receptionist or patients in the waiting room.

Teenagers are said to be reluctant to attend locally-run ante-natal classes - held in community centres, clinics or hospitals - because they feel they are being judged by the midwives. Rhona Hughes, who chaired the panel behind the guidelines, said: 'We did find examples in the literature of good practice where clinics were held in schools and young women were more likely to access care


She added that the panel had interviewed many young girls who said they had bad experiences going to their GP or antenatal classes and felt they were being judged by the receptionist or midwife. Although no British schools run antenatal classes, they have been held in classrooms in the U.S. since the early 1990s.

Girls are told about labour, given advice on their diet and taught how to breast feed. Dr Gillian Leng, deputy chief executive of NICE said it would not be appropriate for all schools to run the sessions, only those in authorities with high rates of teenage pregnancy.

Areas that may be targeted by the scheme include Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark, in south London, and Birmingham, Nottingham, Blackpool and Hartlepool. But Anastasia de Waal, deputy director of the think-tank Civitas, said: 'There simply isn't time for antenatal classes to be held in secondary school. 'It is extremely important that teenage mums have all the opportunity they can and that nothing encroaches on their learning.
'Schools are simply not equipped to provide these services and there isn't room for them.

'We need to address the fact that they feel embarrassed to go to their GP or local antenatal classes - not start providing them at school. There is also the argument that providing antenatal classes at school normalises teenage pregnancy.'

Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, said: 'Schools exist to assist and support parents in the education of their children, not to be the panacea for every social ill.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z10DbTSM6v

[Big RR]

Critics lambasted the proposal, saying it would normalise teenage pregnancy and make it more common than ever.

And here I thought we had a monopoly on these assholes in the US.

[dales]

[Big RR]

Laugh all you want, but that's one industry I wouldn't mind shipping overseas.

[Sue U]

They should give those classes to everyone. Believe me, nothing will cut the teen preganancy rate like showing kids those films of childbirth they show in Lamaze classes.

[dales]

Laugh all you want, but that's one industry I wouldn't mind shipping overseas.

You and me both.

[Andrew D]

I think that anti-natal classes would be a better use of funds.

[dales]

Why?

[The Hen]

Because you really don't want children having children.

[dales]

I misinterpreted Andrew's post to mean no one should be having children.

[Crackpot]

that's his usual line

[Andrew D]

I do not believe that no one should have any children. I do believe that too many people are having children and that too many people are having too many children.

[dales]

If a couple is able to care for "too many" children, what's the problem?

[Andrew D]

That's a big "if". In all too many cases, it is so big as to be surreal.

As we have seen a gazillion times over, the ones who end up footing the bill are not the parents. The ones who end up footing the bill are the rest of us.

But even setting that aside, the fact remains that human overpopulation is wrecking the entire planet.

There are those who pertinaciously deny that fact. The problem for them is a problem of evidence: All of the available evidence demonstrates that human overpopulation is destroying the world -- for us, for our posterity, and for everything else (except, perhaps, some species of insects and whatnot).

The total quantum of evidence to support the proposition that human overpopulation is not wrecking the planet is exactly zero. Denying that human overpopulation is wrecking the planet is on an intellectual par with claiming that Earth is flat.

We have before us a simple choice: Either we do something rational and humane to check human overpopulation, or nature does something far more cruel to check human overpopulation -- disease, famine, etc.

Which do you prefer?

[Crackpot]

The problem is you seem to think sandbagging the Mississippi will help the flooding of the Nile.

Fact is while overpopulation is a problem not all places have an overpopulation problem.

[Andrew D]

The problem is that you are evidently not grasping the essential unity of our planet's biosphere.

Sure, there are distinctions among the air qualities of Beijing and Wichita and Brazilia. And there are distinctions among the potabilities of water in various different places. Etc., etc., etc.

But the bottom-line fact remains the same: Earth has one atmosphere. There is no American atmosphere, no European atmosphere, no Asian atmosphere, no African atmosphere. There is one atmosphere, and it is the air which all of us, no matter where we happen to be located, breathe.

And the same is true of fresh water. Sure, those of us who live in relatively rich countries have the luxury of clean drinking water. And those of us who live in the shitholes that are many countries around the world have the misfortune of drinking water that is unhealthy. But at bottom, there is only one supply of fresh water. Just as there is only one supply of clean air.

When we get right down to it, the inescapable fact is that resources are limited. We can, if we are bold enough to gird up our loins, address that inescapable fact. Or we can choose instead to plunge our heads into the sand and hope that reality will just go away.

I have made my choice. What is yours?

[Crackpot]

Coming this January.

Really what needs to be done is to address the problem where it exists. it plain makes no sense to impose draconian measures where the birth rate is already negative all you'll do is eliminate e population that breeds responsibly.

[Andrew D]

I don't want to impose draconian policies on anyone.

I have repeatedly pointed to the PRC's on-again-off-again one-child policy as an example of what we should be trying to avoid.

What I advocate is a set of non-compulsory policies geared toward reducing the total rate of reproduction to less, but only a bit less, than replacement numbers.

I want contraception to be available worldwide to every person who wants it. I do not want people to be forced to use contraceptives; I just want them to be able to use them if they want to.

But at some point, any government which sees its society as heading toward total breakdown as a result of overpopulation is going to take measures to prevent that from happening. And those measures are likely to be unpleasant (viz the PRC's forced-abortion and forced-sterilization policies).

I want us not to find ourselves in a situation in which such policies have to be given serious consideration. I want us -- and I mean all of us, the entire human population of our planet -- to engage in a rational and humane policy of causing the total human population to go down rather than up. I want us, as a species, to decide that we will not bequeath to our children and our godchildren and our nieces and nephews a world which we, the dominant species, are consuming and leaving nothing to them but detritus.

I want our posterity -- I have no children, but I have godchildren and nephews, and I love them as my own, because they are -- to inherit a lush and verdant planet, not a desiccated wasteland. I want to bequeath to them a world, not a hollow shell of a world.

What do you want?

[Crackpot]

SO you're now backing off your stated forced sterilization and parenting by license programs you have endorsed in the past?

[The Hen]

No way would I consider never having the Hatch.

That kid is that smart she might save us all yet.

I'd hate to live in a world where there was no hope.