For these next 900 or so words I am allotted, I implore you, readers, to set aside your biases, your predispositions and your quick tempers to think about this topic with a rational state of mind. I do not expect to change your opinion, but merely wish to broaden your scope of thinking and hope you allow yourself to consider changing your opinions.

For those of you who have not heard the joyous news of late, a 13 year-old boy just celebrated the birth of his daughter a few short weeks ago with his 15 year-old girlfriend. Alfie, who has promised to take care of his daughter, doesn’t understand completely the concept of being a parent — a concept that still scares the living daylights out of most of us college 20-somethings.

“We didn’t think we would need help from our parents. You don’t really think about that when you find out you are pregnant. You just think your parents will kill you,” said Chantelle, the baby’s mother, to UK paper The Sun. Chantelle herself is one of five children in her own family, which currently lives on government benefits.

The good miracles don’t stop with Alfie, though. Nadya Suleman had a successful birth of octuplets, which is undoubtedly unusual. Suleman, who is already a single mother to six other children, had the two baby girls and six boys as a result of fertility drug treatment. Unfortunately, the children were born nine weeks prematurely.

It seems ironic to me that Suleman had graduated from California State University with a bachelor’s degree in childcare development.

Both of these recent stories should have brought joy into our lives, right? Another child was born into this wonderful world. Personally, I could feel nothing but sadness, for multiple reasons. I am sad that Alfie does not understand what it means not just to be a father to a baby, but to be a dad. Chantelle obviously doesn’t seem to worry about how keeping this child will affect her life and her family situation, unless she is splashed on the media with the purpose of bringing money into the household, which is sad in its own right.

I am sad for Suleman’s children. What kind of attention and care are they receiving? How is she affording the extensive hospital bills, daycare, schooling, clothing and food? I realize that every mother feels a connection to her children, but she shouldn’t have to rely so much on others to support her children. It is selfish.

In June 2008, it came out that a pregnancy pact was made among a group of friends at a Massachusetts high school. Eight girls under the age of 16 planned to get pregnant in the same time span to raise their children together. That particular high school’s sex education ends in the students’ freshman year, and the school has an in-school daycare. Counterbalancing the problem isn’t the full answer. We should be taking preventative measures, too.

It is astounding that many private schools are sticking with an abstinence-only educational approach. Hormones are hormones, and mistakes happen. Those mistakes might as well be as small as possible. In some public schools, health classes have been dropped due to high pressures of No Child Left Behind, a program that Obama has spoken about altering in the next four years. It only makes sense to add a stipulation to the program — no health or sex education may be dropped at its expense.

Education and common sense shouldn’t be all at the hands of the schools, though. Parents need to step it up. I think most of us can admit we pretended not to listen when our parents tried to give us advice or make rules. But most of the time we did hear — and I hope you all still try to talk sense into your children, because they’re your responsibility.

The government needs to take some of the blame, too. We all have a hand in this big mess. The schools need to step up their education, parents need to take responsibility for talking to and teaching their children, and the government health system needs to take bigger measures in counteracting the problem we already have.

Women who have already had children as teens or who are single mothers should have the opportunity to receive long-term birth control with assistance from our health care systems. Many options are available, and it would not promote any further promiscuity — we already failed there in our school systems — but would help avoid a worse situation in the future. Remember, if they become pregnant again, they will have to work more and spend less time raising their children, have an abortion, or put the child up for adoption.

Abortion must remain, for the time being, an option. Our adoption system is messed up. Many couples adopt internationally, and almost all states do not allow gay couples to adopt the children that are here abandoned in the US. Supposedly gay couples will morally corrupt our youth, but isn’t it better to be raised in a financially secure home — as financial security is part of the background checks — with two parents who cherish and love you, than to live most of your life shuffled around foster homes? Being around someone who is gay does not make you want to be a homosexual. It doesn’t work that way, and if you think it does, then you need to do your research; you’re in college for God’s sake.

After all, God made homosexuals that way. You don’t think He’s sitting up there in heaven in shame because we still don’t get it? We got over racism and sexism, and yet we’re still finding reasons to blackball someone.

I gladly await your response letters.

Sarah Tisinger is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Bettendorf.