To Make a Pledge of any Kind Is to Declare War Against Nature

Teenage pregancy decreased dramatically from 1950 (96 per 1000 women aged 15-19) to 2000 (49 per 1000 women aged 15-19).* The reason for this big decline has been fodder for debate, with one side claiming that this rate is down due to abstention from sex and the other asserting that the rate is down due to better education and access to contraceptive devices.

Teenagers having sex, rather than teenage pregnancies or abortion, is viewed as the problem in the United States. We have chosen to try to stop that problem rather than try to stop the potentially disastrous outcomes from a completely natural act. State and federal legislators continue to push abstinence-only plans, try to cut funding to public helath clinics and attempt to make it illegal for public health clinics and schools to teach the proper use of and distribute contraceptive devices to teenagers without their parents consent. They do all of this despite the fact that only 1% of all minor adolescents who use sexual health services indicate that their only reaction to a law requiring their parents' involvement for prescription contraception would be to stop having sex.**

What is obvious to most of us who have been teenages is that these methods do not work. A large federal study just uncovered that teens who pledge to remain abstinent until marriage are just as likely to engage in premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence. The frightening part is that these who vow to remain chaste are significantly less likely to use condoms or other forms of birth control.

"Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior," said Janet Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of bith control that is quite striking."

My son is only three so I shouldn't have to worry about this for a while, but I can draw a parallel to riding a bike or playing sports. These are potentially dangerous activities and I wouldn't even consider letting him partake if safety requirements and precautions weren't in place. Similarly, I wouldn't want my son to be ill-prepared and at-risk when he becomes sexually active.

Telling my son not to do something is futile more often than not. Apparently that behavior will continue for a long time to come and I am not willing to let him risk his future cavalierly because I am too uptight, pious or frightened.

And yes, everyone deserves to raise their children their own way. I just want parents to consider all of the angles and look at the statistics before they make a choice.

The title quote comes from Mark Twain.

*National Center for Health Statistics, "Births to Teenagers in the United States, 1940-2000," National Vital Statistics Report, 2001, Vol. 49, No. 10.

**Jones, RK, et al., "Adolescents’ Reports of Parental Knowledge of Adolescents’ Use of Sexual Health Services and Their Reactions to Mandated Parental Notification for Prescription Contraception," Journal of the American Medical Association, 2005, 293(3):340–348.