Readers are now left lacking compelling reasons to concur with assertions of Mr. St. Clair’s column, which manifested itself in this eminent gazette on Oct. 23 (“The Maine point: The pill for middle schoolers is a bad plan,” p. 5). To his predominantly preposterous pontification that birth control should not be given out in Portland middle schools, I respond with a veritable triumvirate of refutations.

I will set down my first point here. My family has a noble history of enjoying human rights. For example, and this being just one example chosen from a multitude, my great Uncle Thaddeus published a cheeky screed against James I of England (add five to that if you’re Scottish — schwing!). As an offspring of this grand tradition, I believe that all humankind ought to have rights, be they minors or majors. Are we such capable arbiters of justice? What power bestows upon us the privilege to determine at what age a young citizen can receive her rights? Read now this maxim, which, although it has just now sprung from the font of my subconscious, resonates like an ancient proverb: Where fickle Eros wanders, Liberty must soon tread, blindly waving her sword hither and thither, thither and yon. Thus, only by giving children birth control can we teach them not to use it.

Secondarily, experience has taught me — as experience is wont to do — much about the perils of love. If music be the food of love, play on! Love is the enemy of reason. Who among us would claim that parents, infected as they are with the love of their children, can possibly be trusted to make objective choices on their behalf? Nay, the state should determine the destiny of children, guided as it is by the enlightened counsel of college-newspaper columnists. This idea has surely led to a calibration of your deepest ideological suppositions. Isomorphism. Zeitgeist. Perplexitude.

While my third point does, as I will candidly admit, come third, do not doubt its magnitude. To use a more plebeian phrase, it is last but not least. This, the final point, comes at the terminus of the letter. It is the ultimate argument, the climactic end. Its finality is only matched by its conclusiveness. This, the closing, remains my most irrefutable and authoritative point, proving beyond the shadow of, as it were, a doubt that birth control pills should be given to middle school students. Do not doubt its power, Mr. St. Clair. Put more simply: Dismiss your misguided misgivings as they apply to both its vim and its vigor.

Jeremy Rothstein

CAS ’08