{"id":6063,"date":"2006-09-07T09:43:05","date_gmt":"2006-09-07T09:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/pop-that-balloon.html"},"modified":"2006-09-07T09:43:05","modified_gmt":"2006-09-07T09:43:05","slug":"pop-that-balloon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/pop-that-balloon.html","title":{"rendered":"Pop that balloon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A reader sends this along:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I recently attended a wedding in Madison, WI and this past Saturday morning (9\/2) I visited the Farmer\u2019s Market surrounding the capitol. <\/p>\n<p>My family noticed that Planned Parenthood had a table there and they were giving balloons to children. These balloons had their name and logo on them. While I don\u2019t know what can be done about this, I found it to be very disturbing. Society has done much to prevent tobacco companies from marketing to teens; promoting Planned Parenthood to children is equally, or even more disturbing. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">I&#8217;d say so&#8230;.the reader points out one of the most persistent irritants in our society&#8217;s attitude to young people and health.&nbsp; In some areas there&#8217;s no room for even a little indulgence &#8211; total, absolute abstinence is the call. But in others&#8230;shrug. Just be safe, you know?<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The data&#8217;s there. Sexual activity is bad for young people&#8217;s mental and physical health. It puts them at greater risk for all sorts of problems and propels them into all sorts of internal prisons, ironically limiting their inner freedom as they&#8217;re deluded into believing that they&#8217;re living it out. Who thinks that 16-year olds are better off smoking than not? No one, I don&#8217;t think. Who really thinks that 16-year olds are better off being sexually active than abstinent? Who? They&#8217;re out there, but I have never understood it, not at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A reader sends this along: I recently attended a wedding in Madison, WI and this past Saturday morning (9\/2) I visited the Farmer\u2019s Market surrounding the capitol. My family noticed that Planned Parenthood had a table there and they were giving balloons to children. These balloons had their name and logo on them. While I&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Pop that balloon - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/pop-that-balloon.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pop that balloon - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A reader sends this along: I recently attended a wedding in Madison, WI and this past Saturday morning (9\/2) I visited the Farmer\u2019s Market surrounding the capitol. My family noticed that Planned Parenthood had a table there and they were giving balloons to children. These balloons had their name and logo on them. While I&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/pop-that-balloon.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-09-07T09:43:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Pop that balloon - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/pop-that-balloon.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Pop that balloon - Via Media","og_description":"A reader sends this along: I recently attended a wedding in Madison, WI and this past Saturday morning (9\/2) I visited the Farmer\u2019s Market surrounding the capitol. My family noticed that Planned Parenthood had a table there and they were giving balloons to children. These balloons had their name and logo on them. While I&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/pop-that-balloon.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-09-07T09:43:05+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/pop-that-balloon.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/pop-that-balloon.html","name":"Pop that balloon - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-09-07T09:43:05+00:00","dateModified":"2006-09-07T09:43:05+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/pop-that-balloon.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/pop-that-balloon.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/pop-that-balloon.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Pop that balloon"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}