Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Increase in U.S. Teen birth Rate Due to Failure of Contraceptive-Focused Sex Ed



If only we could devote more funds and resources to, and drastically increase, federal funding for abstinence-only health "education," we might stand a chance to combat the scourge of medically accurate sex education.

Labels: , , ,

posted by ema @ 11:03 PM   8 comments

8 Comments:

At 3:06 AM, Blogger Matt said...

Wow, the most conservative part of the map has the highest rates. Also the North South thing is going on here. That map is a story all by itself.

 
At 6:06 AM, Blogger ema said...

Matt,

I know, it's striking, isn't it?

 
At 7:02 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wish the map wasn't just for 15-19-year-olds. I'm thirteen, going to school at a California public school, and already two girls I know have fallen pregnant. One of them is a year younger than I am.

Our "sex ed" was pretty sketchy. "Here's the whole body, everything is natural, but don't have sex!"

We need more comprehensive material. I know these girls probably would have had sex anyway, but maybe they'd have (correctly) used BC or told the guy to use a condom.

I don't know what to really think. I'm terrified for these girls. The school acts as if their stomachs don't exist just as much as they can't see that yeah, even young teenagers are curious about sex. Here's hoping Obama can do something about it? I just really hope so.

 
At 8:13 PM, Blogger Green Weaver said...

This is a fascinating map and the news story behind it as well. It is certainly true that there appears to be a correlation between where abstinence-only curricula prevail. It is not particularly responsible to report so unequivocally that the increase is due to these differences in sex-ed. I would really like someone to look at the data and make an attempt to control for potentially confounding factors (such as socio-economic class) that correlate with both higher teen birth rates and living in the South independently from what kind of sex-ed one is exposed to.

 
At 11:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Wow, the most conservative part of the map has the highest rates. Also the North South thing is going on here. That map is a story all by itself."

Wow, the areas with the most minorities (who all vote liberal) have the highest rates.

 
At 4:25 AM, Blogger Moe said...

I definitely agree with Green Weaver. I think that we can accurately say that abstinence-only sex ed IS a factor, but other factors should DEFINITELY be brought into this---to make it more accurate and to get more information on how we can help educate the youth of ALL races and classes.

 
At 4:57 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think you need to check your facts. Minorities DO NOT always vote liberally, in fact, I think it's probably true that most do not. Besides the fact that I think you'll find far more minorities in larger cities, most of which don't happen to be located in the south.
Unless of course by minorities you mean African-Americans...because yes, you'll find a lot of black people living in the south.
All that's really besides the point though. I think that you should probably try to keep racist and INACCURATE statements to yourself. It's pretty rude to assume that it's all the black ladies having babies in their teens. Check the statistics.

 
At 2:32 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

As striking as that map is, it can't really reflect the whole story- because we're only looking at BIRTH RATES...not the rate of pregnancy. Which is going to be hard to come by for teens. For all we know (and this may not be the far off the mark) the pregnancy rate is the same, just the birthrate is higher in the South because Southern teens have fewer abortions (due to lack of access, or just different values). Anyway, it's certainly troubling, but we can't jump the gun here.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home