Teen Pregnancy Problem

[ls317]

CANTON, Ohio -- There are 490 female students at Timken High School, and 65 are pregnant, NewsChannel5 reported.
Some would say that movies, TV, videogames, lazy parents and lax discipline may all be to blame.



http://www.newsnet5.com/news/4885861/detail.html

[radwriter0555]

1. Hmmm, usually males of the species are the impregnators of the females. I

would like to know how girls get pregnant from teevee and movies now.

[AuntPatsy]

2. There is not much else to do in Canton, sad but true, my niece

graduated from there. It is a beautiful little town, quiet and peaceful and the people seem generally likeable, very friendly...

[NEOBuckeye]

6. Canton is a dying city.

The area hit its' peak in the mid 1950s and has been sliding into decline and irrelevancy ever since. An almost complete lack of vision and leadership in Canton over the past half-century have only contributed to sorry circumstances as described in the article above.

Simply put, there are no jobs there, no major universities, nothing much to inspire kids to aim much past their present circumstances. People should be surprised that more girls at Timken High aren't pregnant. Those students who remain ambitious despite their surroundings get out of town soon after graduation, perpetuating a cycle of brain drain.

How to solve it? There are no magic bullets, but it would be interesting to envision what Canton might look like today, had it chose a very different path.

[don954]

3. how much do you want to bet that comprehensive sex-ed isn’t taught

and rubbers are not given out to the students..

[TomInTib]

4. This shouldn't be amusing, but they keep saying "3-pronged

progam"...how many prongs do those guys have, anyway? What is a girl to do against those odds?

BTW...based on his - ahem - performance YTD, GWB has one very tiny little prong-ette.

[me b zola]

5. abstinence only "sex education" & other stupid puritanical ideas

But oh yes. The media wants to ignore the elephant in the room. Instead, lets blame it on lazy parents. While we're at it, lets send those lazy parents to prison--after all, it helps the economy when these heathens are incarcerated. Never mind the fact that teenagers become sexually active WHEN THEY ARE TEENAGERS, and the puritanical culture has all but banned real sex-ed and access to birth control.

[Warren DeMontague]

7. Meanwhile, Local Pharmacist Gets Praise From Christian Leaders for his

"Conscience-Based" refusal to fill birth control prescriptions.

[Ms. K]

8. Yeah, same old tired excuses

from the same old tired people.

Gee, why are there 65 pregnant girls at this high school? For starters, they're not taught about birth control options because of abstinence-only sex education. Not to mention "conscience laws" that mean that self-righteous pharmacists can deny girls who do manage to get a scrip for birth control.

Oh, and let's not forget, I have to wonder how many girls are really told that yes, they can say no to some boy who wants to screw them six ways from Sunday. That's a serious question...really it is.

[no_hypocrisy]

9. "Problem"? B/c they don't have access to abortion or b/c there is no

community support for their carrying their pregnancies to term and allowing them to finish school by the provision of daycare and public and/or private subsidies for health care for their infants?