Punished with a baby?

Okay, I did not intend to get into this but really!.... Obama.......punished with a baby?
How many women in this world long for conception and can not conceive? I bristle at that statement.

As a high school teacher I KNOW that the majority of our teens are sexually active. Because I teach art my students relax and often begin to discuss a variety of subjects. It is no mystery that a baby during the teen years is a hardship on the teen but punished is not the word that we should use here. A common subject matter for drawing in all of our art classes is the student's baby. I do not think they would say they are being punished. They love their babies.
I am not condoning their irresponsible and immoral behavior. But to state that we are punished with a baby is to suggest that a teen should be able to choose to murder the baby that God breathed life into and placed in that womb.

One of my classes got into a discussion about abortion this past week. The majority of the class initially felt that abortion is wrong but in the case of rape they felt it was alright. The most selfish people in the room backed their choice of abortion not surprisingly. I carefully guided my questions so as not to tell them what I believe but rather to make them think. (I find that when people feel that they came to the decision without being told what to think, they take claim to it better.) I did not present any new arguments but asked questions at specific points in the discussion that I felt they needed to hear.

• One girl in my class is all about herself, her dancing and advancing in dance. Her mother told her not to mess up her chances at advancing in her dancing by getting pregnant and basically said she would get an abortion should she get pregnant. She is sexually active (I will not go there). I asked her when did it become a selfish act to abort a baby? She looked at me stunned beyond words when I asked the question. Others jumped in agreement. Adoption was mentioned, women who could not conceive were mentioned and the conversation turned to mutual friends of several who adopted children and how wonderful it was that those children were not aborted.
  
• At some point in the discussion I asked if the cells were growing inside is that evidence of something alive like a plant growing? And if that is a life did that make a mother a murderer if she aborted?
  
• And of course, the primary question: what did that baby do to deserve to be denied life?

The question of abortion was truly a controversial question when I was a teen. Although it continues to be a controversial question I fear that our youth have not considered it fully or REALLY thought of it from the moral standpoint.

Well, in my fourth period class they now are at least, thinking of it from a more mature point of view.