Chicago 5th Graders Will Now Have Access To Free Condoms

In an effort to prevent "bad stuff" from happening to young people, the Chicago Public School system announced it will begin offering condoms to 5th graders who attend city schools. More than 600 CPS schools will have condoms available to students starting in August when the 2021-22 school year begins, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

That's right, 10 to 11-year-olds will be able to load up on condoms on Fridays before heading home to get the weekend started. “We want students to come to us and to have access to those condoms for free as opposed to potentially having to find them elsewhere or choose not to use condoms. ... It is about recognizing that school is investing in young people’s health," Scout Bratt, from Chicago Women’s Health Center told the Sun-Times.

Talk about growing up fast. So not only are Chicago children having sex well before the typical kids who start dabbling with sex and Natty Light, but they're being shot and dying at three times the pace of 2020, the Sun-Times reports.

As of June 27, 25 children under 17 have been killed this year by shootings. There have been 172 children 17 or younger who have been wounded over the same period. “Our children are becoming extinct,” Rev. Michael Pfleger told the paper. 11 children were shot over the 4th of July weekend.

Like most sane people, you're probably thinking that 5th grade is an absurd time for the school system to be worrying about handing out condoms. However, as CBS-2 Chicago found, we're talking about kids who belong to the streets at an early age. ATF data from 2018 showed that nearly 600 guns had been recovered just that year from children.

Combine the streets, anarchy, guns, drugs, plus sex and you have a Chicago school system that has pretty much said the hell with it, we might as well try to stop some pregnancies if they'll even take the condoms in the first place.

“Essentially what we want to do is make condoms available to students for if and when they think they need them,” a school official told the Sun-Times. “ … When you don’t have those protections and don’t make those resources available then bad stuff happens to young people. You have elevated risks of sexually transmitted infections, of unintended pregnancies, and that’s very preventable stuff.”

In 2014, Chicago received a grant to start offering condoms to high schoolers. Seven short years later, they've made it all the way down to 5th grade. “That doesn’t absolve a parent from talking to their child about responsible behavior and respect,” then-mayor Rahm Emanuel said at the time.

Congratulations, Chicago, you've really got all of this under control. Things seem to be trending in the right direction.