Hey, I said, almost....

It’s probably not a big surprise but I like doctors. I don’t mean just my parents or my brother in law or my own (hypothetical) doctor I mean I like what they do and what they stand for. They are mostly smart. They are nice and sciencey. They believe in evolution. Generally speaking it gives me pleasure to deal with people for whom cold science, reason and logic win out over everything else.

Which is partly why I’m filled with the desire to get a can of kero and burn something when I hear the latest sewage gushing forth from AMA president Rosanna Capolingua – number one candidate for a reality TV show I have just made up called Let’s Burn Public Figures Alive.

This week Dr Capolingua, for whom I will try to come up with a cutting nickname before the end of this blog entry, thinks giving teenagers access to the morning after pill without parental permission isn’t on because it won’t stop teenage pregnancy. Now really? Because I thought that was EXACTLY what it was intended to do.

But before I go on let’s hear from Dr Fuckface (hey, I’m trying) shall we? Here we hear her responding to comments by Victoria's Centre for Adolescent Health director Professor Susan Sawyer, who was bold enough to suggest teenagers should be allowed to have the morning after pill without having to tell their parents.

"Let's talk about preventing the episode of unprotected sex," (Dr C) said on Channel 7. "What we need to do is talk about preventing the teenage pregnancies ... and handing out the morning-after pill is not the way to do that.”

Personally I think Dr Capolingua’s point is a fair one because everyone knows that contraception doesn’t stop… no wait I mean that emergency contraception wouldn’t… that is because of the… oh well I mean surely…. Wait, what is her point?

Dr Capolingua said Australia had "dropped the ball" when it came to talking about condoms and the prevention of unprotected sex. "I think what we need to do is look at better education, better information transfer to young people to empower them to make the right choices," she said. "In some families there is that ability to have those conversations, but in many families there isn't. We have to provide that information to kids through other means, and certainly schools are a very important source of that.”

Brilliant. This is the net result of years of medical education and a career as a GP. No Fucking Kidding kids need to be educated about contraception (step one, Dr C, don’t send your kids to a Catholic School eh) but, really, if they DO get pregnant (either through being ignorant or unlucky or a stupid twit) the damage is pretty well done and is there really any point in making some 15-year-year old either a)have a stupid kid b)get an abortion in a month’s time c)risk being chucked out of home by asking her parents for permission to take the morning after pill and hope they give in in time?

I think not. Personally I wasn’t exactly at risk of being knocked up in my high school years, if you see what I mean, but if I had been then I would rather have chucked myself off a bridge than tell my parents. And I have very nice parents. What about kids who have shitcake parents who either don’t believe in the morning after pill or don’t believe in their little Charlene screwing around? Heaven this little SLUTS should be allowed to prevent pregnancy in the same perfectly legal way that anyone who is a few years older is already allowed to do.

In Dr C’s world the kid pays the price of the failure of schools or her parents to educate her about sex and contraception. In Dr C’s world it’s better that little Cindy gets sent to her room (read: forced to have a child) to Teach Her a Lesson rather than risk a world in which young women actually have some control over their bodies and access to drugs designed to enable them to make their own decision about when, or if, they have a child. In Dr C’s world she doesn’t deserve to be burnt alive for all of the above crimes. But in my world she almost does.