Confused Christians Punish The Girl Who's Keeping Her Baby Instead Of Aborting
A high school girl is getting the "Scarlet Letter" treatment from her school -- not being allowed to "walk" at her graduation and being removed from the student council -- because she is pregnant.
Of course, this would likely not be known to the school if she'd decided to abort her baby.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes for The New York Times about 4.0 student Maddi Runkles, 18, who attends a private Christian academy:
"She made the courageous decision to choose life, and she definitely should not be shamed," said Kristan Hawkins, the Students for Life president, who tried unsuccessfully to persuade the administrator of Heritage Academy to reverse the decision. "There has got to be a way to treat a young woman who becomes pregnant in a graceful and loving way."David Hobbs, the administrator at Heritage Academy, a nondenominational independent school in Hagerstown, Md., where students take daily Bible classes, declined to discuss Ms. Runkles. In a written statement issued on behalf of the school's board of directors, he said she would earn a diploma, and called her pregnancy "an internal issue about which much prayer and discussion has taken place."
Ms. Runkles's story sheds light on a delicate issue: how Christian schools, which advocate abstinence until marriage, treat pregnant teenagers.
"You have these two competing values," said Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia who directs the National Marriage Project, which conducts research on marriage and families. "On the one hand, the school is seeking to maintain some kind of commitment to what has classically been called chastity -- or today might be called abstinence. At the same time, there's an expectation in many Christian circles that we are doing all that we can to honor life."
The "you slut"/Scarlet Letter approach doesn't seem to be in keeping with that.
When I was serving my final year on the public school board, I drew a girl in my row of diplomas who was obviously pregnant. I was shocked when I suddenly realized how much harder every day at school, with all the whispers, must be for her than it was for the sports star with a full scholarship to Duke that everybody had been praising for the last month at the awards ceremonies.
If I were serving another year, I would have requested any and all of them for my row so that I could look them in the eye and tell them "I'm really proud of you!" , in case they hadn't heard it lately. Well, at least I made her smile.
Douglas Smith at May 21, 2017 9:37 PM
It's a private school with its own rules; she's a legal adult.
Shun her; make her valedictorian; give her her own TV show; make her wear a wimple to get her diploma.
It's their business. Who cares?
Kevin at May 21, 2017 11:15 PM
Oh, they aren't "confused." They know exactly what they're doing. They actually view it as consistent, even if it's counter-productive.
Grey Ghost at May 22, 2017 5:35 AM
I think most people who are pro-choice would still say that abortion should be a last resort. So yes, if the goal is to reduce the number of abortions, this is self-defeating.
Cousin Dave at May 22, 2017 6:44 AM
Herein lies the problem with organized religious dogma. In theory, it sounds so great. In reality, it doesn't work at all. You have to be a hippocrite to get past age 16 or so still believing what folks like these believe. Which, honestly, dosen't have a thing to do with the book they purport to get it from. I want to say her parents should sue the pants off these people- see what I did, there? But, they paid to send her there amd knew the 'rules.'
Allison at May 22, 2017 7:00 AM
I would love to know if the boy who also participated in premarital sex and is the other half of the pregnancy is allowed to walk in grraduation, or if he is getting the same treatment.
Stormy at May 22, 2017 7:02 AM
Really? There does. Why don't we have a celebration for her with lots of presents. Let's encourage all the other high school girls to get pregnant, too.
So, she'll earn a diploma but not be able to walk in the graduation ceremony. If an employer or college checks her record, it will show a high school graduation with a 4.0 GPA. There just won't be a pregnant girl in the photos.
Is this in keeping with the Christian ethic espoused by Jesus? Not really. Is this going to hold her back in life, no; certainly not as much as the teenaged pregnancy is.
Is this silly? Yes. Does the boy who impregnated her get to walk? Somewhere out there is a boy who also had underaged premarital sex (unless it was a teacher).
The school doesn't want any "fallen women" in the graduation photos. No hard evidence the school's students are human. Perhaps they could take down all the identifying banners and regalia. Put everyone in generic robes. Hide the faces of the faculty as the awards are presented. Scrub the speeches of any reference to the school.
I would have paid money not to walk in my high school graduation ceremony. It seemed like a waste of a good Saturday afternoon. I had my diploma and my college acceptance letter. I was outta there with bells on.
Except, the diploma would be withheld if I didn't walk in the ceremony. Are graduation ceremonies so despised that the schools have to blackmail students into attending them?
As such, I had to participate in a ceremony in which what were supposed to be adults would shout and scream for various graduates, despite being asked by the principal to hold their applause to the end. Seriously people, it's supposed to be a solemn occasion, a transition to adulthood, not a WWE cage match.
Basically, we're celebrating a societally-sanctioned participation trophy. Your kid managed to stay sober and show up at school for enough days to not trigger an automatic failure. Congratulations. When your kid cures cancer, then you can shout like a maniac at the ceremony.
This kid has a 4.0, which means she not only showed up sober, but answered the roll and perhaps a question or two in class - at least if the explosion of "my kid is an honor student" bumper stickers is a valid statistical indication of the general watering down of the meaning of "honor student" in today's schools.
Conan the Grammarian at May 22, 2017 7:06 AM
Well, Jesus took a dim view on hypocrisy. If these folks are into shaming sinful behavior, I say let them have some.
Allison at May 22, 2017 7:12 AM
You've not considered the other people there.
Take any girl who's guarded her chastity. Why should they equivocate on the moral stance of chastity being a good thing before marriage? Everybody knows where babies come from - as one of the commenters above has already expressed, some people view the pregnant girls as a hero for having done, per the teaching of this school, a transgression.
Most people who have a moral code don't buy the argument that at least she didn't double down on her transgressions. It's great that she realized things and stopped, but that doesn't mean she has to be made into a hero, and having a whole row of them is going to teach the children that they can get all sort of status and acclaim by engaging in premarital sex.
It's why people teach their children to wear modest clothing - it's to suppress their natural sinful desire to exhibitionism and vanity of being in the spotlight.
El Verde Loco at May 22, 2017 7:34 AM
> If I were serving another year,
> I would have requested any and
> all of them for my row so that
> I could look them in the eye
> and tell them "I'm really
> proud of you!"
If I were serving on a public school board, I'd have thrown her out on the street and told her she had one calendar year to get her shit together and, giving her full attention, collect on the taxpayer's generous offer of a free secondary education, and that no matter what she might want from me in terms of interpersonal affirmation, that expectation was likely to be a severe disappointment for her.
Knowutimeen, Jellybean?
I fucking hate it when grown men and women throw innocent babies overboard to nourish their fucked-up fantasies of idiot parents in heroic poses.
Fuck all, boy.
Crid at May 22, 2017 7:48 AM
Kevin at May 21, 2017 11:15 PM ✓
Crid at May 22, 2017 7:52 AM
Stormy at May 22, 2017 7:02 AM ✓
Crid at May 22, 2017 7:53 AM
Did you tell the girls who didn't do drugs, smoke, or have sex you were proud of them? What affirmation did you offer to the ones who obeyed the rules?
We, as a society, are too in love with the Prodigal Son parable; the fallen who returns home and is welcomed back with open arms. We ignore the one who stayed and did the actual work so the fallen one had a home to which to return and off of which to mooch.
Conan the Grammarian at May 22, 2017 9:03 AM
Conan wrote:
I would have paid money not to walk in my high school graduation ceremony. It seemed like a waste of a good Saturday afternoon. I had my diploma and my college acceptance letter. I was outta there with bells on.
Me too. When high school was over, it was over. I had no desire to go to the honors ceremony, graduation or any of that end-of-the-year stuff.
"Walking" has turned into a big huge honkin' deal since I was in school. I always felt like it was a nice commemoration for those who liked such things, but it should be entirely optional. The idea of withholding a diploma from a student who had completed the coursework but had better things to do than "walk" is madness.
Kevin at May 22, 2017 9:44 AM
Conan the Grammarian at May 22, 2017 9:03 AM ✓
Kevin at May 22, 2017 9:44 AM ✓
Crid at May 22, 2017 12:02 PM
Gosh, demanding abstinence instead of providing sex education sure is working great.
Again.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at May 22, 2017 12:06 PM
You have to be a hypocrite to get past age 16 or so still believing what folks like these believe.
-Allison
__________________________________
Right. It's too easy to figure out that even religious parents don't really like the idea of their daughters marrying immediately after high school, AND that they want the daughters to gain a few solid marketable skills, even if that takes another four years. I.e., it was one thing to order kids to abstain till marriage when adulthood used to "start" at 13 and marriages were often mandatory and arranged anyway, but nowadays any teen can figure out that the unspoken message is "abstain until marriage or death, whichever comes first." Hardly anyone respects that idea.
Besides, there are MANY reasons it might not be financially wise to marry until 30 - especially for men. If we're not religious enough to demand that men abstain from sex that long, it's unfair to expect women to wait that long either. Besides, as I've mentioned, anyone who DOES abstain that long and is not extra-religious is very likely asexual, gay, or very unpopular for reasons that may not be obvious right away.
Btw, one could unfortunately argue the school is somewhat progressive, for a religious school. In the 1970s - maybe in public schools as well? - a pregnant girl would often be ordered to drop out. (I suppose that technically, that wasn't being expelled, since she could allegedly return later, but she seldom did, for obvious reasons.)
lenona at May 22, 2017 2:30 PM
"It Takes A Village": And Could Somebody In The Village Please Stigmatize Willful Single Motherhood? -- Amy Alkon, Advice Goddess Blog, November 23, 2016
Ms Alkon: "A high school girl is getting the "Scarlet Letter" treatment from her school -- not being allowed to "walk" at her graduation and being removed from the student council -- because she is pregnant."
Scarlet Letter treatment = stigmatize?
Do you disagree with the Christian school stigmatizing their single mother-to-be because you no longer think single motherhood should be stigmatized, or because the school is Christian so whatever they do is wrong?
How should the school have handled their 4.0 single mother-to-be honor student? How could they stigmatize willful single motherhood without stigmatizing single mothers?
Ken R at May 22, 2017 4:50 PM
I'm sorry if I upset anyone with my recollection. That wasn't my intent. What I think of when I hear the word Christian is to "Judge not," "He who is without sin," "Do unto others," and "Love one another." I aspire to live my life that way, then and now. So that's where I was coming from.
Douglas Smith at May 22, 2017 9:42 PM
"What I think of when I hear the word Christian is to "Judge not," "He who is without sin," "Do unto others," and "Love one another.""
What I think when I hear a Christian cite "judge not" and "he who is without sin" is that I hear somebody begging to be relieved of the hard and necessary things to do in life. Judgment IS necessary, and constantly. Standards ARE necessary, even if you are imperfect by definition. Such people, looking for excuses, are unwilling to hear the last word of the parable of the adultress, which was, "Go, and sin no more."
If you are a Christian, that should be an awesome thing to contemplate: hearing an instruction from Jesus himself, not some earnest but little-known preacher of today.
But nobody wants to hear that.
Radwaste at May 23, 2017 1:59 AM
I think the school should let her attend graduation. Countless other girls in her situation are undoubtedly learning about Maddi's trials and speculating on how much a quick trip to the nearest abortion mill would cost them.
Shame is underrated in today's society, but innocent life is even more important.
mpetrie98 at May 23, 2017 11:13 AM
"innocent life is even more important."
No fetus is innocent. Most of them are armed. I was restocking the condom machine in a hospital delivery room when one came out smoking a cigarette and wearing a leather motorcycle jacket!
Little bastard nearly knifed the anesthesiologist for not giving him a hit off the mask.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at May 23, 2017 8:42 PM
Leaving aside the fact that MANY women in the U.S. would have abortions in the first two months instead of the third or fourth if there weren't so many obstacles thrown in their way:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/opinion/sunday/abortion-people-whove-had-them.html
Excerpt:
...In states like Indiana, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia, elected officials are willing to imprison people for administering their own abortions because they simply couldn’t afford care nearby. Vice President Mike Pence is a man so obsessed with abortion that as governor of Indiana, he signed every anti-abortion bill that crossed his desk, including mandating funerals after abortions and requiring medically unnecessary ultrasounds. He also awarded millions of taxpayer dollars to fake pregnancy centers.
Anti-abortion policies like these aim to bring about an end to abortion; but history has shown us there’s no such thing. Abortion will continue. The only question is whether it will be safe or unsafe.
The crux of the issue is not whether you would have an abortion yourself. It’s whether you would stand in the way of someone else’s decision. Everyone loves someone who has had an abortion, though we may not know it...
"Renee Bracey Sherman is a member of Echoing Ida, a black women’s writing collective, and the senior public affairs manager at the National Network of Abortion Funds."
lenona at May 24, 2017 8:19 AM
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