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…