Pregnancy stats
- Yearly 10% of all teens 15-19 that are sexually active become pregnant. That is around 1 million girls.
- 78% of regnancies are unplanned
Teen pregnancy outcomse:
-The United States has the highest rates of teen pregnancy and births in the western industrialized world. Teen pregnancy costs the United States at least $7 billion annually.
Abortion Stats
- 1,370,000 abortions occur annualy in the US alone
- 52% of abortions occur in women 25 years old or younger
- 92% of abortions are done by means of birth control.
- 1% are done because of rape or inscest
- 4% are done because of fetal abnormalities
- 3% are done because the pregnancy risk mothers heath
Opinions
- According to a USA Today, CNN Gallup Poll in May, 1999 - 16% of Americans believe abortion should be legal for any reason at any time during pregnancy
- Also that 55% believe abortion should be legal only to save the life of the mother, or in the case of rape or inscest.
Thoughts
First question that has to be asked is why are there so many unwanted pregnancies in our country every year? Also by looking at the stats you see that over 90% of abortions are performed for birth control reasons ranging from not being able to afford a baby, to wanting to postpone childbirth. Therefore if we could find an effective birth control method we would eliminate 91% of abortions. The absolute best method of birth control is abstinence, but asking millions of teenagers and older adults alike to not have sex is truly irrational. Although I do believe that this method should still be taught in schools and in sex education as the only ‘perfect’ way to avoid pregnancy and be given as much attention as the other These statistics raise some very interesting questions about pregnancy and abortion. The methods. I also believe all the commonly known methods should still be taught also, because they can also limit unwanted pregnancy greatly if done right. You may ask, if we are already teaching these methods why haven’t they helped? The answer is they actually have helped seeing that from 1990-1997 teen pregnancy dropped 17%. I still believe that there are some problems not as much in what is being taught, but in the way it is being taught. Think back to your High school health class learning about sex. Almost all of the time these classes are taught by a coach or easy teacher who is just teaching a “blowoff” class that kids take to get a free A. If this class was taken more seriously and taught before teens became sexually active, then it would affect the way they looked at sex, staying abstinent or if not being extremely safe about sex, STD’s, and pregnancy. Another aspect that would help teenage pregnancy would be their parents. Parents should be the ones to first tell their kids about sex and inform them on the ways to stay away from unwanted pregnancy and abstinence. If a teen has their first sex talk with a friend or and older brother or sister, don’t you think the information may turn out to be a little skewed? If the information they receive first is true and from a parent, it means a lot more and has a lasting impact on the decisions the teen will make in his/her life. Although we may have differing opinions on whether or not abortion is right or wrong, we all definitely can agree that abortion is not a good thing to have to do. So in turn we can agree that if we can limit unwanted pregnancies, we can help stop abortions from occurring so frequently in our country.