Blessed Sacrament Opposes Teen Clinic At TC

(Wednesday) March 3, 2010

I wasn’t surprised to read the March 3, 2010 article about members of the Blessed Sacrament and other Alexandria Catholic communities voicing their opposition to moving the Teen Wellness clinic from its current location near the Minnie Howard School to a location inside T.C. Williams High School. The opponents site anecdotal rumors, which they admit they have no evidence to support, that teen girls will “completely skip over the pill” and “head for the morning after pill.” One vocal opponent went on to claim that “We’re still in the first generation of the morning after pill. Do we really want to treat these girls as guinea pigs?” The opponents also cite concerns that parents will be shut out of important decisions made by their teenage children.

First of all, the “morning after pill” has been around for decades, but it wasn’t called “the morning after pill” or “Plan B.” It was simply plain old birth control pills prescribed off label and taken in only two doses, which prevented implantation of a fertilized egg. This has been a medical practice all over the world since sometime in the 1970s. It is only in the past decade or so that it has been  approved by the FDA, and very heavily marketed, as the “morning after pill” or “Plan B.”

In addition, teens can get condoms and other forms of birth control without the parents knowledge or consent at any number of places, from CVS to the clinic WHERE IT STANDS RIGHT NOW. The clinic has existed in one form or another for twenty years. If Catholics feel so strongly opposed to it, why haven’t they been protesting on the tennis courts outside the clinc for the past decade or so? I’ve never seen a single person protesting in front of the clinic at its current location between the tennis courts and the Bradlee Shopping Center. It would be easy enough to walk the ten minutes from Blessed Sacrament to the Bradlee shopping center, grab a coffee and pastry, protest for fifteen or twenty minutes, then play a game of tennis before stopping by the ABC Store on the way back to the church. Why hasn’t anyone at Blessed Sacrament done that before?

I’ll remind the Catholic Community of a bumper sticker I saw: “Don’t pray in my school and I won’t think in your church.”

And I’m an Episcopalian…

Ranter: Gail Gordon