Teenage Pregnancy

Being a teenager can be one of the most fun and exciting times of a person's life. It is the time in your life where you are not a child anymore, but you are also not quite an adult. These adolescent years can also be the most troublesome of your life. Unfortunately, there are some teenagers that get pregnant and they are not married.

There are many methods that the teen can choose to prevent pregnancy. There are condoms for booth male and female. These condoms, however, only work about 97% of the time. Now, I don't know about you, but if I were chancing a condom against 18 years of my life being tied down, I would think that, that 3% margin of error is very major. For this reason, over the years sex experts have gotten smarter by creating a spermicide. If you were to use the condom and the spermicide, then your chances are at 99.9%. Yes, I agree that this is a lot better than a 3% margin, but there is still a 0.1% chance. One in which I am not willing to take.

Along with condoms there is also birth control. Birth control is a pill the women take every day all month long. This pill can be used as a contraceptive for the sexually active. It also helps control or lightens a woman's period, helps with acme, and it is easy to use. However, when used as a contraceptive, it is only 92-99.7% effective.

There are also the birth patches. The patch is worn on the skin on the abdomen, buttocks, or upper body. It releases hormones into the bloodstream that prevent ovulation. This is a very good alternative to women who can not seem to remember to take the pill everyday. You simply have to remember to replace it every week. As good as this may seem the patch still has a 1% chance of not working when used as a means of birth control.

Education is a big part of preventing teen pregnancies. I believe every high school student should have to take a sex education class. They should also have to carry around baby-think-it-over, the plastic crying baby that is usually part of these classes. I believe if every high school student had to take this class they would think twice about taking precautions before sex and there would be a lot less teenage pregnancies.