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A Stop to Teen Pregnancy?
So, I was online looking for some editorials for an assignment I have for my AP English class every six weeks. And there was this one article about teenage pregnancy, and it struck me that there are always so many things that are over looked about teenage pregnancy. Take for one the fact that towards the end of the 18th century, teens were still being married off, and it was desirable because all they were supposed to do was have children, preferably male. Secondly, women didn’t begin to have aspirations and didn’t stop to think: “well maybe I want a career, maybe I don’t want to get married so young, maybe I want to wait to have children,” until the past half century. And then, there was contraception: the pill, condoms, I.U.D. all of them, opened the doors to a freer sexuality. Women no longer had the fear of “what if I get pregnant?” Teens today on the other hand, have obviously, never lived in a world without contraception. But of course, there is that small detail that says there is a tie between poverty and teen pregnancy. So does that make it a question of who has the money to buy a condom and who doesn’t? Well condoms rip, so I wouldn’t say that’s all it has to do with. Well maybe she can’t afford to be on the pill. True, but then we admit that teens are having sex, and I don’t believe that abstinence is the answer to that, as the article I was reading in the New York Times said that there was a rise in teen pregnancy between 2005 and 2006, which could mean that the Bush administration take on sexual education was not working. So what then is the answer to teen pregnancy? Well, quiet frankly, my take on that is simply that there is no answer, no solution to teen pregnancy. Why? Because Roe v. Wade says that a woman's' body is her own and we cannot tell her what to do with it; that includes the fetus she may or may not have within her body, at least during her 1st trimester. Quiet frankly, because teens will do whatever they want to do while unsupervised, all we can do is educate them. While I do not approve of “babies having babies” or teens having sex for that matter, I cannot tell every girl on this earth that they cannot have sex. What I can do is do my best to keep my friends for doing such things, setting an example for them, my nieces, younger cousins, and my own future children, who I don’t plan to meet until I’m married and at least 26 years old.
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Citation for the editorial:
"A Troubling Uptick." Editorial. The New York times 30 Jan. 2010: A22. The New York Times. 30 Jan. 2010. Web. 30 Jan. 2010. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/opinion/30sat3.html>.