We’ve all heard the news that teen pregnancies in the US were lower than they’d been in years, etc. But a recent study the the National Center for Health Statistics reported that this 14 year trend is no longer, well, a trend. Between 2005 and 2006 teen birth rates went up 3%.
There are very few teenagers out there who want or who are ready for kids. You have to wonder why these teens are having babies – this isn’t stating a rise in the teen pregnancy rate, after all. This is talking about the number of teenagers who are actually giving birth.
Abortions are expensive, and many states require parental notification. There are so many misconceptions and intentional misinformation about abortions out there that it is often hard for a teenager to get reliable information about abortions. But there’s a way to lower the teen pregnancy rate without raising the rate of abortion – emergency contraception.
Right now EC is only available to those 18 and over without a prescription. If it were made as readily available to teenagers, perhaps we’d see a decline in this rate. It’s pretty clear that our current sex ed curriculum’s aren’t working, if we’re still seeing this increase. Teenagers are going to have sex; and they have the right to be informed about their options. If schools would just mention EC during their sex ed class, I have a feeling that things things would change. Encourage your schools to incorporate EC into their curriculum’s – call it a public service.
Read the article on The Washington Post’s website.
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