A strong family unit is essential for our children in today's society. It is the foundation for them as they learn right from wrong and it is the basis from which their decisions will be made. Yet as we progress through the twenty-first century, the family unit seems to be nearing extinction and our youngsters are the ones who are paying the price. The following story is not only true, but a harsh reality of what families have become and is an example of why it is so important to regain what has been lost in the shuffle of today's society.

I was watching the news a week ago and flashing on the bottom of the screen was a breaking news report. It caught my attention and I turned the volume up to hear the reporter. The words that came from his mouth made me ill. The breaking news he was reporting on was about an eighth grade girl who had just given birth to a baby in the toilet. Eighth grade! She was only fourteen years old. But you see, this was not the creme de la creme of the report. The baby had died. The young girl stated that the baby had been too slippery to remove from the commode; she attempted to flush it away. The autopsy report revealed that the child (a little boy) was roughly thirty-five to thirty-six weeks in gestational age and weighed five pounds, six ounces. His causes of death were blunt force trauma to the head, water submerssion and asphyxiation. The only question left to answer was whether or not this eighth grade girl should be sentenced to capital punishment.

I was mortified. We hear these types of reports from time to time, but this time was different. Maybe it was because the girl was only in middle school. Maybe it was because she claimed she couldn't rescue the baby. Or maybe it was because throughout all of the talk of punishment and throughout all of the analyses being made by the psychologists, never once did the reporter make mention of this child's parents. Where were they through all of this? Why was their daughter not educated enough to have had protected sex? Why was their fourteen year old daughter having sex at all? While this child was about to be placed on the chopping block for her crime of alleged murder, there was not a single soul placing any responsibility on her parents.

While I obviously do not agree with what this young girl did, I also feel very strongly that she should not be solely punished for her crime. And while I am not naive enough to believe that all the values we instill in our children stay

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