Birth Control vs. Abstinence - Only in Sex Education - Comments

I completely agree. I was having a coversation with my dad the other day (or more like, my dad was just talking to me and I was listening and nodding a lot) about how taking the mystery out of some things makes them significantly less desirable. For instance, in the 80's some people had record companies put stickers on albums that had songs with explicit language and mature content to warn people that they were "innappropriate". When Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue was told by the record label that the band was signed to that there would be a "caution: explicit content" sticker put on their latest (at the time) album, he said something along the lines of, "By all means, put those stickers on all of our albums. More people will buy them!". Kids would go to record stores and buy albums that had the sticker on them for the sole reason that the albums donned the sticker that warned of the "bad" things on the disc. My dad was one of those kids, and he told me that he did it because he and his friends didn't know what was so bad about those albums. They had been told not to buy them or listen to them because they were "bad".

That brings me back to the abstinence topic. Lots of teens have sex because the mystery hasn't been taken out of it yet. But, because they haven't been informed properly on the use of condoms or contraceptives, this often leads to teen pregnancy, as you stated. In taking the mystery out of sex by teaching birth control and proper condom use in schools, there would be a significantly less amount of teen pregnancies.

This article was very well written and you had lots of very good points. (:

Telling teens not to do it when its obvious that some of them are going to have sex anyway isn't going to prevent any pregnancys. At my school in the UK they've never once told us to abstain from sex till marriage as i think the teachers realise that half of the class will do it anyway no matter what they say. Even if everyone waits untill their married to have sex, if they're not taught how to do it safely then there will still be unwanted pregnancys and std's going round. So abstaince isn't really the way to teach us?

really well written article btw (:

Oops forgot to add.

A good article. I think that you should know everything about what can happen before hand because expecting everyone to abstain in this modern world of peer pressure and other crap is not being realistic.

Birth control is extensively talked about in UK sex ed. Although we have a high teenage mother rate, there would be little difference if they were taught to abstain as a society, we are pretty secular.

I totally agree. I've been so curious about certain birth control and I thought I would be taught about it in sex education. Wrong. All we talked about was how pregnancy happened, not how to prevent it. Of course the teacher made all the students sign a paper saying they would keep their virginity until marriage. More than half of those kids didn't even care. The US talks about how much they stress sex education, and they do but seriously, they need to so it right. Obviously nothing is coming from this but broken abstinence promises. Most teenagers will have sex. It's about time someone taught them how to have SAFE sex right.

Really well written:)

I agree that birth control should also be taught. I find it kind of unbelieveable that kids drink a cap full of bleach and smoke pot to prevent pregnancy because with all the technology in the world you would think that they would just look it up but then again there are people that are stupid/scared enough to do that.