Martin Henry POOR SHARON Hay-Web-ster and Ernest Smith have found themselves together, across the political party divide, in a cauldron of boiling water for daring to suggest regulation of sexual and reproductive behaviour. The half-deaf media are having a field day stoking the fires.
The "brilliant" Ernie and Miss Sharon, as parliamentary neophytes, are learning painfully that the media set the agenda, decide the news and can make or break you in any kind of public life.
In the face of those mighty microphones and cameras, words must be carefully calculated and counted and preferably spoken from script scrubbed to ensure political correctness. The result is usually the bland, non-committal stuff that one expects to hear from oracles who must sound wise without taking too many chances with the vagaries of an unknown slippery future.
Mrs. Hay-Webster's great blunder was to suggest the sterilisation of women after more than three children. Smith proposed virginity tests for schoolgirls.
Despite the Government backbencher's challenge on electronic media that Hansard be checked for the substance of her speech, it is as difficult to find a reasonable text as the proverbial needle in the haystack. The word out is that Hay-Webster "say them fi tie off" and she is proposing an invasion of women's reproductive rights.
AGE OF CONSENT
There is on the books, a minimum age of consent by girls to sex which has so far completely escaped the wrath and ridicule of the media and the public for whom they set the agenda of discussion.
Except for under-16 pregnancies which show up in the clinics and maternity wards and the rare report by a concerned parent, there really is no means of ascertaining whether under-aged sex has taken place as a basis of prosecuting offenders.
A boy and girl, the story goes from another jurisdiction, were discovered by the police late one night fondling in the back seat of a car. It was the eve of the girl's birthday. The couple's frightened alibi was that they were waiting for midnight for the age of consent to arrive! Why, in Jamaica, should a girl of 15 years and 11 months, or 12 years old, or---, not have consensual sex with a partner, or partners, of her choice?
BLING BLING
Especially if school fees are paid and the costs of bling bling are met? That's how mommy did it and that's how, in many cases, daughter got to be born. How much more ridiculous is a proposal for testing if a law is being upheld than the law itself?
The questions are, in fact quite redundant. Let the available facts speak for themselves: Some recent study indicated that the average age of sexual initiation for girls is 14; for boys, 13. An old Young Adult Reproductive Health Survey conducted by the National Family Planning Board found that 28 per cent of all live births were to girls under the age of consent.
A quarter of these children were having their second child, and five per cent their third. I quote these 1984 figures without the slightest fear that they might have improved!
Should we stop laughing and ridiculing and apply Ernie Smith's virginity test, hardly anybody would be left in school! But there is no certainty that such a state of affairs would be any bigger disaster than what we now have on our hands. So much of the state's investment in education simply goes down the drain on account of the national commitment to reckless breeding.
The progeny of the champion breeders are disproportionately those who don't learn to read and write, don't pass examinations and pose the worse disciplinary problems which are wrec-king the education system. And the younger the parents, the more serious the problem.
The issue is not fundamentally poverty but responsibility. Indeed, it is very well established that delayed reproduction, a stable partnership, and restricted family size is a first class ticket to the dream of escaping poverty.
ROLE MODEL
A famous entertainer and role model has been pleased to announce that him "no fire blank" and is the proud father of 22 children by 21 baby mothers. The quintessential Jamaican man. There is the middle-30s mother of 11 who now regrets her voluntary tie off because the new passing through man "want a youth".
There is the all-female parents household with a total of 13 children, and "no man neva live dey". The visiting relationship has long ago overtaken the stable common-law relationship as the dominant and defining structure of the Jamaican family. And children are mere pawns in the economics and politics of sex.
Into this grand mess, which is a much a part of "the kulcha" as the glorification of studding in dancehall, Hay-Webster and Smith have tossed propositions for some regulation of sexual and reproductive behaviour. But there are some things which the law cannot do. And there are some things which are too invasive of personal freedom.
Our freedom to .... and breed imposes huge economic, social and developmental costs on the nation. Every one of Mrs. Hay-Webster's and Mr. Ernest Smith's colleagues in the Parliament knows this, but it would be too politically costly in the short-term to tackle the issue.
Both MPs said they made their "ridiculous", freedom-threatening proposals to generate debate. Be that as it may, in the Parliament, who is going to propose sanctions for reckless sexual and reproductive behaviour? Or even reprimand? Tek sleep mark death. See what has happened to the reckless parliamentary duo?
But sanctions are being inexorably imposed on the entire society, not on particular individuals. The fruits of reckless breeding are dropped off in the public maternity wards to become wards of the state.
Beyond the calculable costs of health, education, security, welfare handouts there is the massive cost of social decay with serious implications for the very stability, freedom and democracy which we rise to so vehemently defend against the Hay-Webster/Smith attack.
Martin Henry is a communication consultant.
