Abstinence-Only Education As Applied to Loaded Guns

Heh.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 6:06 pm and is filed under Christianity, Culture, Health, Humor, Politics, Religion, Sex. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to Abstinence-Only Education As Applied to Loaded Guns

  1. qahwa says:
    December 30, 2007 at 8:07 am

    it’s sad but true.

    Reply
  2. Summer Squirrel says:
    December 30, 2007 at 12:17 pm

    During Xmas my fundy mother sadly stated that teenage pregnancies have been getting more numerous. I had to stop myself from saying something like, “Well, you wanna know why? Your precious president….”

    It would’ve spoiled a perfectly good day. Maybe some other time.

    Reply
  3. Bad says:
    December 30, 2007 at 1:19 pm

    Your mother was wrong in any case. teenage pregnancy rates are still much higher in the US than in godless Europe, but they have been declining steadily at least in the last couple of years I can find data on. It’s possible that they have bumped up in the last few years, but almost certainly they have not reached (either corrected for population growth or even not!) the heights they once were.

    Guttmacher data

    And here’s a study of British rates that has some interesting conclusions about the reality of the issue vs. the perception (emphasis added)

    Health professionals and the general public should be wary of claims that the rate of teenage pregnancy in Britain is `high’ and increasing in an alarming way. International comparisons suggest that the rate is moderate and that the past six decades have seen a decline rather than a rise. Over the same three to six decades the number of adolescents having sex has increased greatly and the age at menarche has decreased. The fact that birth rates have not risen in a time when the at-risk population rose sharply, suggests that (again contrary to popular opinion) teenagers are reasonably competent at preventing unwanted pregnancies. We believe that the selective reporting of international and time comparisons by policy makers results in a `manufactured risk’ and has more to do with moral panic than with public health.

    And let’s not forget that the teenage pregnancy rate in the US back in the pre-modern age (colonial days, golden years, etc.) used to be much much higher (since people had kids earlier to younger brides or, just as commonly, women who then became brides at shotgun point). By some accounts, nearly a third of all first children were conceived out of wedlock even amongst the chastely early Americans (they were decidedly more sexually weird than most people think: see the bizarre practice of “bundling“!

    Reply

Leave a comment