Why do teenagers get pregnant at such a young age? Is it lack of sex education? Not wanting to use condoms? Abortions being readily available?
After an outbreak of pregnancies among middle school girls, education officials in Maine, Portland have decided to allow a school health center to make birth control pills available to girls as young as 11.
The rationale is that some kids will have sex and the school must try to reduce pregnancies. Also, parents must sign a waiver allowing their children to receive medical care at the school.
They’ve been making condoms available to 11-year-old boys since 2000 and now they’re handing out birth-control pills to 11-year-old girls. This is awful! Birth control pills can cause a lot of damage healthwise and this is a decision that needs to be very carefully made by the parents, doctor and child. Not by a school nurse.
This is foolish, ridiculous, and irresponsible.. I hope this wont happen in Malaysia.
News source.
Some facts from Annie E. Casey Foundation.
1. Teen pregnancy is by far the most publicized danger of underage sex. Statistics reveal that every year in the US, over 850,000 girls between the ages of fifteen and nineteen become pregnant. Equally worrying are the figures that suggest 20,000 girls under fourteen become pregnant annually; of those 8,000 go on to give birth.
Teen Sex and Pregnancy, The Alan Guttmacher Institute, New York, 1996
2.Nearly one million young women under age 20 become pregnant each year. That means close to 2800 teens get pregnant each day.
3. In the U.S., 7 in 10 women who had sex before age 14, and 6 in 10 of those who had sex before age 15 report having had sex involuntarily.
I think a lot of teens are having sex because their being taught and influenced to have it. Their friends are going out and partying and their comming back to school telling everyone they had sex and saying ?you should do it to?.
But also some teenagers are doing it to feel beter about themselves. Their feeling down about themselves and they need to let go of some of that stress, so their going and having sex with random guys because they know guys are stupid and will do that.
Now im not saying all guys are like that, but a lot of guys these days are having sex because they know when girls are feeling low about themselves and they know hey can get whatever they want.