Iowa, Juno, and Unplanned Pregnancy

Juno is about an unplanned pregnancy.

Mom, are you looking for something to do as an alternative to football on Sunday night? The Purple Wren and I saw Juno at the Fleur Cinema two weeks ago. We both liked it a lot. As you already know, it is the story of one year in the life of a 16-year-old who becomes pregnant. That situation is definitely not funny but the movie is thanks to some very clever dialog. It’s also sad and touching. If you don’t worry about knowing too much before you see the film, check out the review by Roger Ebert who thought it was about the best of the year or read the review in The NY Times.

For you moms, depending on your level of maturity and your daughter’s, this could be an opportunity to start a conversation with your 16-year-old daughter. Take her. On the other hand I have some questions about taking a 13-year-old even though it is rated PG-13, but I am kind of old and maybe a little traditional. For some of you others out there this movie might be pretty uncomfortable for you and your daughter, and you might be happier with the football. While I liked seeing the movie with The Purple Wren, as a dad thinking about the time when my daughters were 16, I might have been pretty uncomfortable.

Unplanned pregnancy is all over the news in Des Moines this week, you know. The University of Northern Iowa received the major part of an $11.5 million grant to study unplanned pregnancy in Iowa. That’s $2.83 for each of us. Stories about the grant have appeared in the The Des Moines Register and on WHO TV.

You can read the comments by the principal investigator, Professor Mary Losch of UNI’s Center for Social and Behavioral Research. The Center’s primary focus is public health, and according to Losch the UNI study will be centered on, but not limited to, unplanned pregnancy in women in the age range 18 - 30. In her comments she refers loosely to a statistic that roughly half of the pregnancies of American women are unplanned. This information and far more can be found in a report from the Guttmacher Institute. There is a lot of information available in the report, but here is the information that got my attention in particular. There are six million pregnancies in the U.S. annually, and 2.7 millions of those are unplanned; that’s almost half. Of those 2.7 million unplanned pregnancies nationally 1.3 million end in abortion. You know, it really doesn’t matter if we are pro-choice or pro-life, no one likes that statistic. We are a society committed to common good, and we can have a common goal whether a supporter of Planned Parenthood or a pro-life group – to reduce unplanned pregnancy and the need for abortion.

Reka Basu has given us some information about what unplanned teenage pregnancy costs us in Iowa each year - $82 million/year. That’s $27.33 for each of us and that is just the teenagers. That fact is just a smidgeon. Reka Basu’s opinion piece is worth reading.

I grew up in the 1950s and some of my high school friends dealt with unplanned pregnancy. Now my unplanned pregnancy study is not worth a nickel of course, but here it is anyway. Between the beginning of my junior year in high school and graduation, 5% of my classmates were part of an unplanned pregnancy. That is 1 in 20, and those are the ones I am aware of. These were popular kids who were doing fine in the classroom and participating in the extracurricular life of the high school, much like Juno. Three of these couples got married (and later divorced) while another was ordered by the courts to provide child support. I am sure you have your stories too. Many are pretty sad. A few are happy. Some are tragic. How cruel is it to deny family planning education to teens? There is always a price to pay especially for a teenager.

Did you know that Iowa has an initiative to reduce unplanned pregnancies and with it, abortions? Read up on-line in the The Des Moines Register. Christie Vilsack, former first lady of Iowa, announced the Iowa Initiative to Reduce Unintended Pregnancies in early January. She will be executive director and will be assisted by a 10-member board.

So who is funding the big bucks UNI study? (Well, maybe it’s not a big bucks study when you compare it to the cost of unplanned teenage pregnancies. Unplanned pregnancy is big bucks. By comparison at $11.5 million the study is comparatively little bucks.) Funding is coming from The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation honoring the memory of the widow of Omaha’s multi billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett.

For those of you who might have missed my blog last week on helping groups, here is the part again about family planning, pregnancy, and adoption.

In a list of New Year’s resolutions no one has unplanned pregnancy at the top, but here are some of Des Moines’ options for family planning, pregnancy, and adoption:

Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa provides education and services related to birth control, pregnancy and sexual health.

A New Beginning is a Catholic Charities organization providing free pregnancy options counseling.

Ruth Harbor is a Christ-centered home for young women dealing with unplanned pregnancy.

Who’d a thunk it? Iowa – right in the middle of movies, grants, initiatives, news, and activity about family planning and unplanned pregnancy!

Guest Writer: James G. Lindberg (Jim) is the Purple Wren’s sweetie and is a visiting chemistry professor at Grinnell College and retired from Drake University.

Photo credit: Lawrence Whittemore

[tags] Iowa, Des Moines, Central Iowa News, Juno, Social Services, Health Education[/tags]