Are you the parent of a teenager or a child getting close to those troublesome teenage years? Do you wish to avoid those awkward conversations about sex, sexual practice, and sexual health with your children? Wish you could dump off all that embarrassing part of parenthood on the State?

Good news! Schools are already doing this for you.

Middle and high school students can’t get a Coca-Cola or a candy bar at 13 Seattle public schools, but they can get a taxpayer-funded intrauterine device (IUD) implanted without their parents’ consent.

School-based health clinics in at least 13 Seattle-area public high schools and middle schools offer long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), including IUDs and hormonal implants, to students in sixth-grade and above at no cost, according to Washington State officials.

LARCs are associated with serious side effects, such as uterine perforation and infection. IUDs, specifically, can also act as abortifacients by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg.

The state and federally funded contraceptive services are made possible by Take Charge, a Washington State Medicaid program which provides free birth control to adults who are uninsured, lack contraceptive coverage, have an income at or below 260 percent of the Federal Poverty Level — or, in this case, to teens who don’t want their parents to know they’re on birth control.

As the father of a three year old daughter, I’ve often laid in bed at night, frantic, worrying about just how my wife and I will approach this subject with a young woman growing up in what is undoubtedly the age of the “Do What Feels Good” culture. I didn’t realize that all I had to do was move to Seattle and the school system would take care of it for me. I don’t have to know a thing about it.

All mockery aside, this is really a big deal, because you are very much inviting children to keep pretty big secrets from their parents. In this day and age, it’s definitely not unheard of for teenagers to be sexually active, but it’s also a completely inappropriate development of our culture to allow kids who by law do not meet the age of consent for sexual activity to be given devices by the government to allow them to have sex safely without their parents’ consent.

The culture wars are a broad series of engagements between different groups, and this is a battle being fought on two fronts: sexual freedom and parental involvement. It’s the “Do What Feels Good” culture meeting the “Children Belong To All Of Us” culture and turning to parents who want to be an active and moral force in their children’s lives and declaring outright war.