Mary, a 16 year old high school dropout, sits alone in a pale blue darkened room illuminated by a Winnie The Pooh night light, cradling her premature two week old son and attempting to sooth him to sleep. He is wrapped in a yellow blanket with minuscule toes that rest at her wrist while the tip of his head barely reaches halfway up her forearm. She tries to comfort him over the noise of the insesent beeping from the machines which allow him to barely cling onto life. She looks down at the tiny mass in her arms, hoping to see some sort of loving miracle, but instead sees only the thing that forced her to drop out of high school, following in her mother’s footsteps of having a baby at 16 and never receiving a high school diploma. Before graduation …show more content…
A study was done which evaluated 13 of the commonly used criteria in abstinence-only education and found that 11 out of the 13 things taught were false or unproven when it comes to health, gender, and life beginning (The Truth). Some examples of these false things taught are that at 43 days old a fetus can think in the womb, 10% of women cannot reproduce again after having an abortion, and HIV can be transmitted through tears and sweat (The Truth). Furthermore, Abstinence-only sex education classes often teach that condoms are not effective at preventing pregnancies, when in reality in couples who use condoms correctly, women have less than a 3 percent chance of becoming pregnant by accident (The Truth). By scaring teenagers like this, abstinence-only classes hope that the teenagers will be scared out of having sex, when in reality they will do it anyway. The Director of Education at Planned Parenthood, Marilyn Anderson, talked about the goal of abstinence-only education when she said “The whole idea is to scare kids and make them think they’ll get HIV by having sex, but what’s walking into our clinic says kids are having sex, just without condoms” (“Abstinence-Only”). This shows that teenagers will have sex no matter what, and by educating them, they can avoid …show more content…
Sex education has been proven to help teens have overall healthier relationships and avoid teen pregnancies after going through the sex education class (American Adolescents’). This is because comprehensive sex education classes teach students how to properly use condoms and lubricants as well as what kind to use to prevent unplanned pregnancies (Ipatenco). Latex condoms is what sex education classes teach as the most effective condom. There are lots of different types of condoms, so by teaching teenagers the right ones to use, they are more likely to avoid teen pregnancies. Some condoms have pores in them, which can allow sperm to break through the condom. However the latex in latex condoms does not have any pores in it, making it durable and assuring that the sperm stays inside the condom (Do Condoms Work?). Not only that, but latex are taught to be the best because they are very affordable (Do Condoms Work?). This ensures that any teenager can buy one and lack of money is not the cause of a teen pregnancy. Finally, some people may believe that all teenagers know about birth control without taking a sex education class, which is far from the truth. Before losing their virginity, 57% of males and 43% of females never learned about birth control and only 31% of male and 46% of females had guidance about where to get it (American Adolescents’). Overall, taking a comprehensive sex education class will lower