Mississippi Has Highest Teen Birth Rates

This article is pretty ridiculous. Yep, teen pregnancy is pretty high in the south. I love how they’re trying to explain the reasoning behind it, though. As a former resident of Mississippi, I’ve seen the teen birth rate first hand.

1) Talking about the top three states with teen pregnancies–"The three states have large proportions of black and Hispanic teenagers — groups that traditionally have higher birth rates, experts noted." < I don’t fully understand the reasoning for throwing that info in the article, but from personal experience I know tons of white girls from my high school that got pregnant too soon, as well. Race doesn’t have anything to do with why teen girls are getting pregnant.

2) They blame pregnant celebrities.–"Glowing media portrayals of celebrity pregnancies don’t help, either, she said. ‘They make it out to be very glamorous,’ said Birch…" < Should we start sterilizing celebrities? Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Garner apparently need to stop being well-cared for and happy about their children. Celebrities are not the cause for teen pregnancies.

3) And then some jackass, David Landry says–"It’s more costly for youth in the Northeast to have a teen birth than for youth in the South, in terms of opportunities they’ll miss." < The south is full of successful career and life opportunities. We have the seafood industry, agriculture, marine biology, gaming, etc. Mississippi has a fucking NASA Space Center! We have DuPont! We have Nissan! What kind of opportunities are you talking about?

The article does touch on the problem being birth control and abstinence-only education. I was fortunate enough to attend a school where we received a lot of important information in our Health class about sex. Wear a condom, boys! Girls, get on birth control! Because guess what! Teens have sex!

What I think is kind of interesting, though, is that a lot of girls I knew were afraid to get on birth control. They didn’t want their mothers to know that they were having sex. Even girls using birth control for managing their periods were afraid that their mothers thought they were having sex. Religion is strong in the south and pre-marital sex is condemned. Instead of protecting themselves, girls would rather risk pregnancy.

If a girl does get pregnant, she is told to choose life! But not her own life. The opportunities of her gestating fetus are far more important than her young academic self. A teenager is not allowed a second chance.

Teen girls should be more afraid of pregnancy than having their parents know that they have sex. Having a child too soon can ruin your life. The choice is really easy. No baby or baby? Wear a condom.