The Spears family, it's safe to say, is shocked by very little thesedays, not with Britney in every tabloid. Still the recent news seemedto shock them. Their 16 year-old daughter, Jamie Lynn, the daughter onwhom the family now seemed to pin their hopes, is pregnant. And whileno bad news is unprofitable for the Spears (it is rumored Jamie Lynnwas paid one million dollars to break the news in OK! Magazine), thefamily does appear to be shaken. ("I was in shock. I mean, this is my16-year-old baby," said her mother.) It seems that no matter howwell-to-do (or bizarre) the family, it's always a tragedy to haveone's child's adolescence taken away by pregnancy. Jamie Lynn Spearsis not your average teen, of course. (Millions await the first babyphotos in some magazine.) But her situation is becoming a more commonexperience for many girls of her generation: premature parenthood.
A Center for Disease Control report released this month reveals thatin 2006 there was a dramatic rise in teen births among 15-19 year oldsin the United States bringing to a grinding halt a steady 14-yeardecline. In fact, we are witnessing the reversal of many positivetrends that began in the nineties. Along with the dramatic decline inteen birth rates, the nineties brought a steep drop in abortion andunwanted pregnancy rates. Even sexual activity among high schoolstudents declined significantly in the nineties and teens who werehaving sex (as on average, 50% will before graduating high school)were also using protection more. Now these trends are slowing orreversing. Sadly, these reversals seemed inevitable. After all, the2000s have turned away from every strategy that the nineties provedwas effective.
In fact, Jamie Lynn Spears and her pregnant peers are the victims of aone and half billion dollar social experiment: the national implementation ofthe abstinence until marriage policy. For the duration of the Bushadministration, the policy of preference is to simply tell teens notto have sex before marriage. Like the Just Say No to drugs campaignsof the Reagan years, it too has been a colossal failure.Abstinence-only programs have not succeeded in convincing kids not tohave sex, but have led many not to use contraception. To scare kidskids away sexual activity, abstinence-only programs focus on thedangers of sex. If contraception is ever mentioned it is to highlight(and exaggerate) its failure rates. If a girl is told that even if herboyfriend uses a condom she'll get pregnant once every seventimes -as the popular abstinence program "Choosing the Best Way"instructs-the incentive to use one dissipates.
Those promoting abstinence-only, mainly religious political groups,say parents should have the right to teach children according to theirbeliefs. What the same groups fail to mention is thatthe vast majority of parents (93%) want their teens taughtcomprehensive sex ed, including accurate information about protectionfrom pregnancy and disease . If there is a prevailing belief amongparents it is decidedly anti-abstinence-only education. They're ingood company too: All mainstream organizations of health professionalsthat deal with young people strongly criticize federal support forcurrent abstinence programs. These include the American Public HealthAssociation, the American Medical Association, the American Academy ofPediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the Societyfor Adolescent Medicine. In a letter to Congressional leaders lastmonth, ten of the top experts in the fields of adolescent sexual andreproductive health advised Congress to completely de-fundabstinence-only programs because of "key problems with abstinence-onlyeducation including the withholding of potentially life-savinginformation from youth."
The toll of withholding potentially life-saving information isbecoming tragically evident. In the states where the abstinence-onlyapproach is more likely to be used disease is up. School districts inthe south are five times more likely than in the northeast to teachonly abstinence. Today, the southern states have the highest rate of new HIV/AIDS infections, the highest rate of STDs, as well as the highest rate of teen births. While over the past decade other regions have made major strides in decreasing or stagnating HIV infection rates, according to the CDC, the South accounts for 45 percent of all new cases.
Teens need accurate information to make important life decisions. Many states legislatures and executives are realizing that instilling ignorance about sex and protection in our teens is the real moral violation. To date, fifteen states have refused federal money for abstinence-only funding. Parents in the remaining 35 states must demand that their governors and statehousesreject federal grants for these ineffective and dangerous programs too. It's the only time just saying no might actually work.
For breaking news on threats to birth control access and information visit birthcontrolwatch.org