Word: teen
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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First, in response to popular demand, some statistics: The Department of Health and Human Services reports that teen pregnancy rates have fallen significantly each year in the 1990s; in 1996 there were fewer teen pregnancies than at any time in two decades. Analysts at HHS attribute this decline to several factors, including decreased sexual activity, increases in condom use and the adoption of new (injectable or implant) contraceptive devices. In other words, the good news about teen pregnancy is traceable to a combination of abstinence and contraceptive education, or an inclusive curriculum. Not coincidentally, the vast majority of Americans favor...
...schools at all. While a great deal of debate remains over what kind of sex education should be included in an average public school student's day, mounting evidence shows that information should be made available to young people - outside of the home. The fact remains that many teens don't get ANY straight facts about sex at home. For example, rates of pregnancy among Hispanic teens have been slower to drop than among other population groups. This week, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy released a survey showing just how much at risk that population remains: While...
Some readers are concerned that sex education programs serve as a de facto "green light" for teen sex, and feel these programs "push" the positive aspects of sex and ignore the moral weight of sexual decision-making. That fear is not borne out by facts. In fact, abstinence supporters may be comforted by the knowledge that the vast majority of sex education advocates - even Planned Parenthood, the target of considerable ire in the flurry of recent e-mails - do present abstinence as the only absolutely risk-free sexual behavior. Planned Parenthood's web site includes a chart detailing the risks...
...reliable information about sexuality - and even for many of those who do - the public schools remain a primary source of facts about sex, contraception and abstinence. And given that two thirds of American public schools do teach a combination of abstinence and sex education, and that rates of teen pregnancy have reached their lowest point in two decades, it may be possible to draw the preliminary conclusion that the combination curriculum is working. Of course, as any statistician or social scientist will tell you, it's always dangerous to draw conclusions from a "snapshot," or a year...
...that condoms should be available to protect the kids who are going to have sex anyway." Given that abstinence curricula just got an infusion of $250 million in federal funding over the next five years, supporters are under considerable pressure to link chastity lessons to the recent decline in teen pregnancy. And so far that evidence is in short supply...