A Connection Between Foster Care and Abortion?

Michael New discusses a connection between foster care and abortion:

At any rate, the fact that children in foster care have high teen-pregnancy rates is unsurprising. A number of studies have shown that children from broken homes are more likely to engage in sexual activity at an earlier age. As such, it should not come as a shock that foster children engage in sexual activity more often and have higher pregnancy rates than their peers. Finding ways to reform the foster-care system so that children are placed in stable homes is a potential solution the author does not mention.

Furthermore, the fact that Planned Parenthood is gearing up to provide more sex education for foster children should concern the pro-life movement. The sex education provided by Planned Parenthood will doubtless be heavy on contraception and light on abstinence. Indeed, Planned Parenthood will doubtless have little interest encouraging reductions in the sexual activity which is causing the teen-pregnancy problem in the first place.

As such, this might be good opportunity for the pro-life movement, particularly crisis pregnancy centers, to specifically reach out to children in foster care. The pro-life movement receives a considerable amount of unjust criticism for failing to care about children after they are born. Reaching out to foster children would help to deflect this criticism. More importantly, greater involvement with foster children would have the short-term benefit of providing a valuable service to a vulnerable segment of the population. Furthermore, it would have the long-term benefit of instilling in foster children values that will allow them to someday form stable families on their own.

Of course, promoting abstinence without the Gospel can easily become empty moralism, so let's talk about the Gospel first and then talk about abstinence.

(HT: STR.org)