In 2014, �249,078 babies were born to women ages 15-19. It is safe to say that many schools do not have a reliable health education class. Some schools do not offer a class whatsoever. Many young teens are engaging in sexual intercourse without knowledge of what safe sex is. This leads to the overwhelming amount of teenage mothers.
Planned Parenthood is a nonprofit organization that does research and gives advice on contraceptives, family planning and reproductive health. They describe themselves as trusted health care providers as well as advocates. The goal of the agency is to promote women’s health and prevent unplanned pregnancies. They deliver comprehensive sex education that allows people to make informed decisions rather than abstinence only, which teaches the only way to avoid pregnancy and STDs is by refraining from sex.
Teenage pregnancy costs money, and not just for the young parents—in 2010, the cost for teen childbirth was 9.4 billion dollars. This was due to the increase in health care and foster care. All of this money comes from the taxpayers. These teens my not have access to contraceptives. The increase in foster care is because many teens cannot take care of a child financially or emotionally.
Teenagers have a bigger problems than money. Around 50% of teen mothers get a high school diploma by the age of 22. Many women who give birth as a teenager are forced into low paying jobs because they never got into colleges. A big factor in this is they did not have the time to go back to school. Most of these kids are forced to stay in low paying jobs because of time and money restrictions.
By this point, we all know that teenagers do not listen to every word that adults say. Therefore, preaching abstinence to them is not going to deter every student. As shown before, many teens will still engage in sexual activity. This is why teaching comprehensive sex education is a major key. The point of comprehensive sex ed is to teach kid about contraceptives and STD/STI prevention. At the same time, it teaches abstinence as the only 100% effective way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and STDs. The largest group of opponents of teaching safe sex is Christian groups. They fear that teaching teens about safe sex will lead them to have sex. Planned Parenthood may not be all that people want it to be, however, it is still very important to teach comprehensive sex education.
Many teens need more than abstinence-only education. It has been proven not to be effective. We need to be open to teaching children about contraceptives. Teaching teens about condoms has not proven to make kids more sexually active. We can help kids keep themselves safe when it comes to sex.
