Teenagers, typically, make for poor parents in all senses of the word. NO ONE wants to think of abortion as birth control. I’m willing to bet my bottom dollar abortion is seen only as a last-resort option for the hundreds of thousands of women who have had to experience the procedure. THE GOOD news is nationwide, the rate of abortions has dropped from 26 percent of all pregnancies to 19.6 percent over the last 20 years. Of all U.S. abortions, teenagers receive a disproportional amount, 35 percent.
They lack the finances to adequately provide for their offspring. They lack the maturity to be good parents. They lack the education to get good jobs to be good providers. And they typically lack a good support network for when times get tough.
Even with those odds stacked against them, today’s teens are more sexually active than ever, with four of every five U.S. teens “playing around” before the age of 20. The consequence, naturally, is young girls getting pregnant. Nationwide, 40 percent of all females under 20 have been pregnant — at least once.
It’s a problem in Allen County. Last year, the teen birth rate was 49 teens per every 1,000 women, more than double the national benchmark for such behaviors.
As a state, Kansas makes it very difficult to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. Passage of even more restrictive abortion laws is imminent. The new laws will not allow victims of rape or incest access to abortion, nor if it were necessary to save the life of the mother.
Kansas also will regard a pregnancy to be a viable life at the moment of fertilization.
Almost half of the women who have had abortions were currently using birth control methods that failed, according to the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute. The other half did not use contraceptives on a basis consistent to their sex lives.
Both instances are strong arguments for wider use of the morning-after birth control pill. When used within a small window of time — up to five days after sexual intercourse — the hormone blocks the fertilization process. Nothing is killed.
Pregnancy doesn’t happen right after sex. That’s why it’s possible to prevent pregnancy even after the fact. It can take up to six days for the sperm and egg to hitch up.
For Kansans, think of it as Roundup as a female’s way to keep those pesky male “weeds” out.
Trouble is, even though the morning after pill has been available for more than 10 years, it’s still not available to the demographic that needs it most — young teens. By law, teens 16 and younger must have a doctor’s prescription to get the pill, despite the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendation to put it on the open market. Those backing the FDA include the American Medication Association, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Pediatrics — experts who deal intimately with teenage parents and their children.
Today’s teens need to feel safe in what is a scary situation. Further demonizing their actions only backfires by unsafe practices and unwanted results.
We can help lower the teenage pregnancy rate by better sex education in our schools, better understanding in our faith families, and by making birth control, in all its forms, widely available.