My girlfriend thinks a lot of parents buy birth control for their daughters. It’s better to live with the sin than with a child, or a pregnant daughter for nine months, I guess. I personally have no idea what the statistics are, but I suspect the issue of birth control is very much a compromising issue - and not just for daughters but for all women. Sure, it’s a sin, but whatryagonnado? It’s not like you’ll go to hell for it. (Keep in mind, I’m not speaking for myself here).

I asked my girlfriend if her mom ever asked her about it. She said no, and wasn’t sure how that conversation would go. Thankfully, she won’t ever need to hear that conversation.

One of the things I liked about Juno is that it put the issue of teen pregnancy in what seemed to me a healthy perspective. One the one hand, it was clear that getting pregnant out of wedlock was, for Juno and her family, a burden and also a source of some real shame. At the same time, Juno was herself a sympathetic character — intelligent, witty and also (which seems important too) quite attractive. And you see how, in part thanks to her (and her family’s) willingness to take responsibility and do the right thing, some real good comes out of it in the end.

The issue of youth pregnancy and sex is something that must be constantly on the mind of parents of teenage girls. I can’t imagine how hard it would be.

Case in point, I know a young woman (21 - she’s my girlfriend’s friend) who is very sexually active. I think the count is up to eight different men in the past year and a half. Her parents, good Catholic, moral parents, sent her to Catholic schools, buy her birth control pills. If not, she’ll get pregnant because she has told my girlfriend that she never bothers with condoms when her birth control pills run out.

It seems to be the hardest of moral decisions a parent must make. Do we buy birth control pills so our sexually active daughter won’t get pregnant? It’s a very sad situation.

Thanks, Clara, for keeping this site going single-handedly!