Pregnancy is not the worst thing…
That can happen to a sexually active teenager. You can recover from pregnancy, if you don’t have the family to help support you raising the child, there are wonderful adoptive parents out there who will. They’ll even pay for everything while your pregnant in many cases.
Don’t get me wrong, statistics show that children who keep the children they are giving birth to increases the chances of living in poverty and that baby ending up in jail. This is a pretty bad statistic. But all in all, you can recover from pregnancy. There are many agencies and programs to help young mom’s who don’t have the family support to raise a child. What isn’t being told to most of these kids though, is that they are more at risk of catching a STD then getting pregnant.
I was just reading that Portland, Maine’s school board had voted to approve giving their teens birth control without telling the parents. Now I don’t know if they are also going to educate these kids about the risks of STD’s or not, but in most cases, those who take the attitude of “well they are having sex anyway..” aren’t also thinking, “Well, we better make sure they know what is out there to catch”.
1 in 5 people in this country over the age of 12 has a STD according to the various statistics compiled by the Center for Disease Control. that’s not a happy number. I’ve been told by various nurses that Genital Herpes, the most common STD infects 45% of sexually active adults. I have a friend who works with pregnant teens and none of them knew that they also had to get tested for STD’s as well. To these kids, an STD just wasn’t what they were worried about. Unlike pregnancy however, you don’t get to recover from most STD’s.
After everything I have gone through, I am a big supporter of teaching kids abstinence until they are old enough to handle the emotional stress of sex in a supportive environment of a good marriage. I know most people consider that an outdated notion but I’m not one of these people who thinks you just tell kids, “don’t”. You arm them with information on the true risks of being sexually active. Pregnancy is the least of your worries as far as I’m concerned. I Know so many parents who give their girls birth control pills, but don’t teach them to protect themselves from STD’s. We females are more at risk then males. Its just a fact of our having an open reproductive system. For example, Chlamydia. Many cases go untreated because the symptoms are not obvious. And its most common in girls ages 15-24 who are sexually active. This disease can scar the uterus. And when your uterus is scarred, its harder for a fertilized egg to attach. They figure every time you get chlamydia, you can lower your fertility by 25%. How many people teach their kids these things?
My advice to those who would choose to let their teenagers be sexually active, if you do so, also arm your kids with the knowledge of the risks of acting like an adult. Don’t just hand out the pills and then act surprised when they catch an STD.
