Teens Having Sex Should Get Married, Not Use Birth Control: Republican

An anti-abortion Republican South Carolina state senator supporting a bill to ban all abortions without exceptions for rape or incest argued 16- and 17-year-olds wanting to have sex are not mature enough to access birth control.

However, the senator argued those same teenagers are mature enough to get married, saying if they obtained parental consent, "I don't have a problem with that."

Challenged by a Democratic colleague during a debate on the state's pending abortion ban, Senator Richard Cash told colleagues that he did not believe that young people should have access to birth control, even if they chose to access it via their parents' health insurance with their family's permission.

The main reason, he argued, is that sex should occur exclusively within marriage—a belief Pew Research polling shows to be at odds with a majority of Americans as well as with more than half of U.S. Christians.

"I believe sex belongs within marriage," Cash said, "because sex leads to children and children need parents. And so I'm not in favor of the state paying for contraceptives for unmarried children. I don't think that's a good policy. I think children come from sex and I think children need a mommy and daddy. And that means marriage."

Cash's comments, which were viewed more than a quarter-million times on Twitter, came at the height of a longer debate around an outright abortion ban in the state, a version of which passed the South Carolina House of Representatives last week after a last-second amendment inserted exceptions for rape and incest up to 20 weeks of pregnancy.

But Cash, one of the South Carolina Senate's most ardent abortion opponents, equated the moral outrage around abortion to that exhibited in the lead-up to the abolition of slavery before successfully pushing an amendment to strip the exceptions for rape and incest from the House version of the bill during committee. Numerous Republicans declined to vote either way on the measure, allowing it to pass easily on its way to the Senate floor.

Critics, meanwhile, say South Carolina Republicans' comments are misinformed not only about who accesses abortions, but also about how birth control is typically accessed. Last week, a South Carolina lawmaker went viral for suggesting that a child raped by their father could get an ambulance ride to a local pharmacy to obtain a "morning after" pill to counteract a potential pregnancy.

Vicki Ringer, the director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of the South Atlantic, told Newsweek that not only is contraception available to young people in the state already, but it is also largely free of charge.

In practice, Ringer said many parents actually encourage young people to get on birth control even if they aren't yet sexually active.

"I think parents, first and foremost, remember what it was like to be a teenager," she said. "It can take only one moment of pressure, of violence, of weakness, of love, for young people to engage in sexual activity. It's happening regardless of what we tell our kids. We hope that they will take our advice."