Her admission of birth control failure is also rare, with about 1-3% of cases that are similiar to her, that is, using oral contraceptives on a regular basis that fail.

The word “failure” in contraception also needs defining, as it can mean many thing. Failure to take it? Failure to take it regularly? Or, with comdoms especially, failure to use it properly.

This is how Educational Failure fits in our model. A french study showed about 17% failure rate using condoms amongst the general population. A stat like this is often used in the abstinence crowd to prove they are unreliable.

But when french prostitutes were studied, failure rate dropped to .07%, as good or better than oral contraceptives, which shows how important education is to everyone, not just teens.

Poverty, abandonment, attraction to older males, etc. had nothing to do with it either. I made an educated choice to be sexually active when I did. I was not pushed into it. I enjoyed sex then, and still do!

I have never felt for one minute that choosing to have my child, instead of terminating the pregnancy, as many advised me to do, in any way limited my choices for the future. I continued my education, and graduated from college. I did it alone, without help from my parents or my child’s father. Was it hard work. Absolutely, but it made me the strong and independent woman I am today.

Should we pay girls to NOT get pregnant? Considering all the insane and stupid things our government spends money on, why the hell not. If it works, let’s use it. I would much rather see my tax dollars going to help young women as opposed to some cop getting over time on a seat belt jurisdiction grant.

It costs me NOTHING.

Whereas your Federalized Proposal would be paid by ME and every other taxpayer. It would cost Hundreds of Billions of Dollars and there’s no doubt a large percentage of that would be siphoned off by grafting politicians pushing programs run by corrupt cronies that DO NOT WORK.

And it would further destroy the important tenet that Education Spending priorities should be decided locally.

And since the Government Schools do a HORRIFIC JOB teaching Language Skills, Mathematics and Science Etc… why would anyone think they’d be GOOD and EFFECTIVE in Teaching Teen Pregnancy Prevention programs?

As for a similar program being partially by the State in Troll County, I would vote NO because it isn’t a big problem here.

If I lived in an area with a high teenage-pregnancy rate, I’d consider voting Yes if and only if the program is graft-free and proven to work.

Bribing? Maybe, but since our current programs aren’t doing much to curtail it, and since the people who SHOULD be doing the most to curtail teen pregnancies (the parents of the teens in question) aren’t doing their job properly, why not start here? The program seems to be pretty successful, from what this says.

Personally, I’m rather in favor of a universal contraceptive in the water supply, to be disabled for individuals only upon passing of a battery of tests and interviews designed to find out whether the people involved would be good parents. But that opens another whole can of worms, I’m afraid.

– PB

Teen pregnancy is not a teen problem, and it never was. It’s an adult problem. Pushing the teen’s to “get it”, to become more “mature”, “responsible”,”abstinent” doesn’t work becuase they aren’t part of the root dynamics that push a teen girl to choose pregnancy over another type of future.

The real causes of the high TBR in the US are-

The ABR, poverty, sex abuse and early sexualization, economic/social attraction to older males, violent and chaotic households, lack of reproductive health care as an un-pregnant female, educational failure, lack of competing choices, male abandonment, and the uncomfortable but true fact that having a child as a teen is sometimnes a good idea.

These are adult-created, adult-perpetuated, and adult-driven dynamics. Only adults can control, fix, or change these dynamics. Not teens.

A teen pregnancy represents a vision of the future that is limited by her choices, and her view of what could be. Teens are “forced” into social corners, and pregnancy is one of the responses.

Rick Machado
Public Speaker on Teen Pregnancy

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