Everyone knows that money is the great motivator, but paying girls to practice abstinence? Is it ingenious, or impractical?
A four-year state grant is funding such a program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. College Bound Sisters, founded by Hazel Brown, encourages abstinence in girls 12 to 18 years old by paying them a dollar for each day they do not get pregnant.
The money isn’t available to spend until the girls are enrolled in college, and some participants have already raised as much as $2,000 through the program.
Brown told Fox News recently that only six of the 125 girls who have been enrolled for six months or longer have gotten pregnant or otherwise dropped out since the program began in 1997.
The program, funded by a grant from North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services, costs about $75,000 a year to operate, Brown told Fox News.
It seems like a workable plan to keep young women in school and out of the realm of unplanned parenthood, but the fact still remains that the government will pay you hundreds more than the $7 a week the program is willing to give if a girl does get pregnant and is single and unemployed.
It’s a nice gesture on the government’s part to help out the single mothers, but what about all the women who are struggling to pay for college and get a job?
They receive no compensation for making the effort to be self-sufficient.
I think a plan like this should become nationally funded and implemented, since teen pregnancy is on the rise again. The possible results are phenomenal and worth every penny.
Teens would be motivated to remain abstinent while earning cash for college and lowering the number of unplanned pregnancies and abortions.
It has to be acknowledged that young black women have a higher rate for teen pregnancy, but with a government-supplemented program such as College Bound Sisters, the African-American community can say that “the man,” i.e. the system, is on their side.
That’s because single mothers with daughters get a little help in paying for their child’s education. At the same time, the child helps to ensure that she is going to college by not getting pregnant.
I know that the government has made some strange decisions recently as far as money is concerned, but I think this is one financial expense that needs to be seriously considered for a national campaign.
Brittany Hopwood, 19, of Lauderhill, is a senior at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
BMH740@Hotmail.com
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