The US News and World Report released a study last week that says 1 in 4 teen girls have STDs (The results from the study showed 24.1% of teen girls in the study to be exact). Among teen girls who were sexually experienced, 37.7% had STDs.
Among the diseases, HPV was the most common infection, followed by chlamydia.
Some experts are calling for young teens and tweens to get the HPV vaccine to prevent the disease, especially cervical cancer, from occurring. Others are calling for sex education to begin at an earlier age.
Maybe we’re preaching the wrong message here. Whether we come out and say it or not, when schools teach messages about special vaccines, pills, or various uses of contraception, many of them do so in a way that says “We’re not going to discourage you from having sex; we just want to teach you some safety precautions.”
If you look online, you can find plenty of websites that teach people how to pass sobriety tests if they’re drunk. Sounds stupid right? Why should these sites even exist? We don’t want drunk people on the road at all, do we?
The same could be said about sex education and all of the “safety precautions.” Schools and experts have no problem telling teens how to take precautions. However, if you drive drunk enough times, you’re bound to be in an accident sooner or later. The same can be said for teenage sex. No matter how “safe” you try to be, you will have to face the consequences at some point, whether physically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, etc.
From that study, it appears that at least 1 out of 4 of teen girls would agree.
Sex education isn’t the answer. Contraception isn’t the answer. Pills aren’t the answer. Vaccines aren’t the answer. We may think they help a little bit, but judging from numbers, it doesn’t seem to be much. It seems the only true answer we should be teaching is abstinence.
If 24.1% of girls 13-19 have STDs, can you imagine what that number will be 10 years from now…right about the time those girls are getting married…
[You can read the full story by clicking here]
Tags: 1 in 4, STDs, Teen Girls
November 30th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Christ is the answer.
November 30th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Jacob, thanks for putting that in. I meant to make the crossover between being abstinent because of Christ, However, in my hurry, I failed to include that. The purpose and need for abstinence will never be understood unless teens see the need for Christ. Otherwise, they will see no reason not to have sex outside of marriage.
November 30th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Very disturbing and disgusting survey. I can remember when I was in high school a stat came out about the STD rate at any given high school being four times the amount of the pregnancy rate. So if there were five girls pregnant, there would be roughly 20 people infected with an STD. That was only 8 or so years ago. This appears to be a very disturbing trend that is snowballing out of control
November 30th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
They teach abstinence in the Chicago Public Schools here through a program called “Not Yet, Not Now” and they always include the emotional part of it. “There are no contraceptives or vaccines for the heart” they say.
December 1st, 2009 at 9:13 am
Gowdy,
That’s really awesome. Abstinence was mentioned at my public high school, but simply because of the diseases that could come along with sex. We actually watched a video that told us if a guy asks his girlfriend to have sex, she says no, and he still stays with her, then that’s true love. I always thought that was a very skewed look at love.