I, like so many others in the world, was not going to get pregnant at a young age. I wasn't going to do what my mother had done, and live my life struggling. I was going to be a kid for as absolutely long as possible. Well, I was not alone in my biased ways. In fact, 35% of girls become pregnant as a teen that is 850,000 each and every year. Of us 5 women here today, almost 2 of us would have been pregnant as a teenager.
As we all well know, teens should not be parents. Teenagers should be hanging out with their friends trying to figure out how to scrape up a few dollars to buy bait for their fishing trip, or get a ride to the mall to hang out; not sitting at home ALONE trying to figure out how to scrape up a few dollars to buy diapers or formula. We also know that one possible way to prevent pregnancy is to use some type of birth control method. That is it. That is our answer. Teen pregnancies, along with many other things are preventable! Each and every one of those 850,000 pregnant girls a year did not have to be pregnant. They do not need to have children that are 83% more likely to become pregnant teens themselves, 50% more likely to repeat a grade in school, twice as likely to be abused or neglected or 2.7 times more likely to land in prison. That is what statistics have shown us happens to children of teenage mothers. The saddest part of all is that it is preventable. How can we prevent teenage pregnancies? The answer is simple and its easy to remember, BIRTH CONTROL.
Birth Control and safe sex are words that we hear daily in our society. There are many forms of birth control. Abstinence is the avoidance of genital contact until marriage. Abstinence is the ideal form of birth control, and it is in fact the ONLY 100% effective way to eliminate becoming pregnant and contracting a Sexually Transmitted Disease. As we all agree it would be ideal for every child to not need to worry about becoming pregnant or contracting a sexually transmitted disease, however, since so many children nowadays are sexually active I think it is more appropriate to talk about why they are sexually active and what we can do to raise awareness and prevent these things from happening.
