Approximately 46% of abortions are performed on college-aged women, according to The Pregnant on Campus Initiative. Then why aren’t colleges more responsive to pregnant or parenting parents?
And though many of these colleges do just about everything they can to push sexual behavior including co-ed dorms and passing out condoms by the bucket full, they do not seem to make any accommodations whatsoever to help pregnant or parenting students. I’m sure that makes young women feel like there’s no way they could continue their education and push them towards abortion.
Colleges can and should do a lot better to help pregnant or parenting students.
The Pregnant on Campus Initiative by Students for Life took to a campus to highlight this wrong.
Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic college, recently created a dorm for pregnant women as an extension of their pro-life belief. I think it’s a wonderful idea and hope that many colleges and universities follow suit.
September 8, 2011 at 3:43 am
Good idea – bad name.
September 8, 2011 at 5:34 am
What is wrong with calling something what it really is?
—also known as Suzanne.
September 8, 2011 at 6:52 pm
As the mother of two college-age girls, I don't think this is a good idea at all. Where's the concern for girls who want support to live a chaste life? Where's the cultural support and positive peer-pressure to behave? All this "pregnancy dorm" does is reinforce the positive attention girls get when they misbehave. "Good" girls get ignored. They aren't called "brave" for not murdering their unborn child. They don't get "showered" and feted. They mostly get ignored, and sometimes even (in our parish) socially penalized for not being promiscuous.
What's wrong with sending them home to Mom and Dad because they've violated the school's honor code? The father of the unborn baby, if he's a student, should be sent packing as well.
Imagine if we set up such a house for the pregnant mistresses of priests. I expect that in our current culture, there'd soon be a contest formed to see who could "take down" the most popular priests. We will always get more of what we subsidize. And too often the pro-life movement glamorizes out-of-wedlock pregnancies in an effort to keep those women from aborting their own children. So now we have incoherent situations like that at my parish, where the head of the chastity club is having co-ed sleepovers.
September 8, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Muscovite: I don't think creating this dorms will lead more girls to sleep around, so the pressure from the "non-chastity crowd" will be the same. Besides, why would I care if I'm not called braved or I am "ignored". Chastity isn't about other people's recognition. Sleeping with someone who's not your husband is not the same as sleeping with a priest! I also don't see how helping pregnant women finish college is to "glamorize the pregnancy". It is much better than send the girl home, as if that's going to solve anything. Children need educated parents, not drop-outs. I'm a chaste woman in college who'd rather see my college support pregnant students than have to hear how so and so had abortions.
September 9, 2011 at 2:20 pm
I'm not sure if this is a good idea either. Encourage marriage not single motherhood.
September 9, 2011 at 6:35 pm
Being a MARRIED pregnant woman on a college campus is challenging enough (sadly). I cannot imagine the pressure, the looks, the comments, for an unmarried, pregnant woman. Every student on every campus sins; this particular sin (sex outside of marriage) may produce visible "proof", like a scarlet letter, if you will. I do think there may be a fine line between compassion and endorsement, however, we are not to judge the sinner, but to offer them a way back to Christ. Trust me, no young woman is going to get pregnant simply because there is housing available if she does. The opposite may in fact be true. The presence of the housing may actually serve as a reminder of the physical purpose of sex, and will help one call to mind why it is to be reserved for the marriage bed.