Teenage Pregnancy: It Can Be Prevented
According to the Students Against Destructive Decisions website there are more than 750,000 teen pregnancies a year. Teen pregnancy is one of the most difficult issues that teens and their families face today. Most teen pregnancies causes both involved to take up low paying jobs, drop out of school, and continue to become more and more stressed from then on. Schools offer sex education classes, but direct it fully towards abstinence. In this decade, many more kids are becoming sexually active. Schools should teach comprehensive sex education because it can prevent teenage pregnancy with both abstinence, and birth control teaching.
Advocated for Youth, a group to help young people make informed and responsible decisions about their reproductive and sexual health states “Comprehensive sex education addresses both abstinence and age-appropriate, medically accurate information about contraception. Comprehensive sex education is also developmentally appropriate, introducing information on relationships, decision-making, assertiveness, and skill building to resist social/peer pressure, depending on grade-level.” This suggests that comprehensive sex education not only teaches actual contraception, birth control, and promotes abstinence, but it teaches more to help any age deal with the likelihood of sexual activity and how to react and deal.
There are several ways to tackle comprehensive sex education. One way to ensure that teenagers don’t get pregnant is to teach abstinence. Abstinence is choosing not to have any type of sex. With abstinence, no barriers or pills are necessary because the person is not sexually active. According to kids health.org “Abstinence is 100% effective in...
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... can use this information, but it’s on how sex education is helpful and how it’s proven to work with teenagers.
Source #5: from a Search Engine-Google. Freking, Kevin. “Study Indicates that Teaching Abstinence Only in Schools Doesn't Equal Less Sex for Students.” 14 April 2007. 6 Dec 2010.
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-I can use this article to quote for my naysayer and how teaching birth control is very effective to prevent teenage pregnancy.
Source #6: from a Search Engine-Google [keywords: comprehensive sexuality education curriculum] Van Dorn, Betsy. “Comprehensive Sex Education.” 2010. 6 Dec 2010. .
-I can use this to learn more about comprehensive sex education, and see opposing sides for a naysayer.
Sex Education. (2010). In Current Issues: Macmillan social science library. Detroit: Gale. Retrieved from http://ic.galegroup.com.byui.idm.oclc.org/ic/ovic/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?query=&prodId=OVIC&contentModules=&displayGroupName=Reference&limiter=&disableHighlighting=true&displayGroups=&sortBy=&search_within_results=&p=OVIC&action=2&catId=GALE%7C00000000LVZ0&activityType=&documentId=GALE%7CPC3021900154&source=Bookmark&u=byuidaho&jsid=97f094e06dbbf5f2bcaec07adbde8e61
"Teen Pregnancy Prevention Focusing on Evidence: Ineffective Abstinence-Only Lessons Being Replaced with Science." The Nation's Health Apr. 2010: 1+. Academic OneFile. Web. 4 Apr. 2012.
Chen, Grace. “Schools, Parents, and Communities Should Contribute to Educating Teens About Sex.” Teenage Sexuality. Ed. Aarti D. Stephens. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2012. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. From “Public Schools and Sex Education.” Public School Review. 2008. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 22 Oct. 2013.
McAvoy, Paula. “The Aims Of Sex Education: Demoting Autonomy And Promoting Mutuality.” Educational Theory. Academic Search Premier, 1 Oct. 2013. Web. 24 Jun. 2014.
Sex is a natural, healthy part of our lives and we have the right to a proper sex education in schools. Sex education in schools have been a controversial topic since 1912, which is when teachers began to be trained on how to teach sex education. The main debate today is whether the sex education should focus on abstinence-only programs or comprehensive programs. Abstinence-only programs focus on teaching students that the only socially acceptable time to have sex is during marriage and abstinence is the only way to protect yourself from contracting STD’s and from becoming pregnant. Comprehensive sex education focuses on reducing the spread of STD’s and teen pregnancies by giving you the facts and information of the different forms of contraceptives that are available. Although America’s various cultures have different views of sex education, it’s important to teach students proper sex education in schools because there is hardly any
Quindlin, Anna. "Sex Ed." The McGraw-Hill Reader: Issues across the Disciplines. By Gilbert H. Muller. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 275-77. Print.
The rise of the teen pregnancy rate has caused us to question the effectiveness of the prevention programs that are offered to adolescents. There have been several programs focused on preventing teen pregnancy from abstinence-only to more comprehensive sexual education programs. Abstinent-only advocates believe that abstaining from having intercourse is the only way to prevent unwanted teen pregnancy. While practicing abstinence is the only 100% secure method of reducing this rate, it is not a logical view. Adolescents will continue to have sexual behavior, and it is important in teaching them more precise education when it comes to sex education. With-holding important information and facts about sexual behavior can change an adolescents’ life forever. Whether it be from teen pregnancy or from a life threatening STD.
Sexuality Information and Education Conflict of the United States. (n.d.). An Explanation of Federal Funding for More Comprehensive Approaches to Sex Education.
Sexual education has been a heated topic for years. The topic started in 1912 when the National Education Association wanted teachers to begin lecturing in sex ed programs.(Pardini, Priscilla) In 1940 the U.S. Public Health Service labeled sexual education an “urgent need” and strongly advocated it in schools.(Pardini, Priscilla) Though sexual education had support from health officials and educators, there were many opponents.(Pardini, Priscilla) Conservatives and health advisors battled over how sex ed benefits and how it should be taught in schools.(Pardini, Priscilla)
Sex Education over the years has provided the necessary information about precautions, along with consequences that means to be sexually active. Moreover, it allows high schools to educate themselves about an aspect of their life that will always be important factor of their love relationship. Every action and decision towards any element in life will inevitably produce a result, and a response. The ignorance of many teens leads them to make stupid decisions that can change their future. I support the idea of implementing sex education at middle and elementary schools. Next step will be to find a strategy to implement it in the classrooms. Birth control methods are simply out of the equation, but today society has created so many tools to facilitate education that a program dedicated to this issue should not be a problem. High School sex education for public and private schools should be a extend class that will teach the different aspects on sexuality of a person life. This change could make a serious impact on the statistics of teen pregnancy, STD’s carriers, and a chance to make rational decisions about their sexual life.
Three million teenagers will contract a sexually transmitted disease and one in three women will become pregnant before they are twenty years old. Teens are contracting sexually transmitted diseases and getting pregnant at an alarming rate causing the government, schools, and parents to scratch their heads. America is the country with the highest teen pregnancy rate in the world. Many are wondering what can be done to stop this. A debate has been going on about whether abstinence only education is doing any good for high school students in America. Abstinence only education teaches teenagers to abstain from all sexual acts until they are married. It does not teach about pregnancy or the different types of contraceptives that are available to prevent pregnancy. On the other hand, there is safe sex education. Safe sex education teaches teenagers facts about intercourse they need to know, acknowledges the potential consequences or risks of sexual behavior, and helps them make better decisions to protect themselves and their bodies.
...rograms would prefer the youth to be mature enough to understand why their bodies are important and the consequences of sexual relations. Both can prevent teen pregnancies and diseases, but it depends on the individual and their values. However, the National Library of Medicine found, through observation and research, that “there was a positive correlation between abstinence program and teen pregnancy. In fact, teens that were taught abstinence only were more likely to become pregnant than those who were taught sex education.”
Sex education in our schools has been a hot topic of debate for decades. The main point in question has been whether to utilize comprehensive sex education or abstinence-only curriculum to educate our youth. The popularity of abstinence-only curriculum over the last couple of decades has grown largely due to the United States government passing a law to give funding to states that teach the abstinence-only approach to sex education. But not teaching our children about sex and sexuality is not giving them the information they need to make well educated decisions. Sex education in our schools should teach more than just abstinence-only because these programs are not proven to prevent teens from having sex. Children need to be educated on how to prevent contracting sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies and be given the knowledge to understand the changes to their bodies during puberty. According to the Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education: Kindergarten-12th Grade from the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), comprehensive sex education “should be appropriate to age, developmental level, and cultural background of students and respect the diversity of values and beliefs represented in the community” (SIECUS).
The long debated issue of teaching abstinence or contraception awareness is an inevitable topic that has and will continue to linger in school board meeting rooms for years and years to come. Parents are not talking to their children about sex because some deem it as awkward or uncalled for, leaving it to the schools to teach the little education they have. “This take on sex education is known among educators as the "abstinence-only approach," in which totally refraining fr...
Preventing teenage pregnancy has been a goal for many years now. Statistics have tried to keep up with the change in the teenage generation. Many people have different opinions on the subject of teen pregnancy, because to some people teens seem to be getting pregnant expeditiously in these times. People fail to realize that having a baby is a privilege to many people and not a problem. Many people take having a baby as a lightly. Getting pregnant and having a kid has many pros/cons. Having a child can be very hard on some people and cause them to break. When babies are brought into this world there are a lot of things to worry about. The greatest problem associated with teen pregnancy is financial instability. Most teens do not have the salary to support a child. In the prevention of teen pregnancy there are many things that are helpful. Abstinence is a for sure way of not getting pregnant. There are also other helpful ways to help prevent teen pregnancy, such as sex education and birth control. All of these things are essential in the helping to prevent teenage pregnancy.