Why Birth Control Should Be Readily Accessible To Teenagers

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Recommended: Condoms should be available in school

Do you think that birth control should be easily, freely, and readily accessible to teens? Well, you should. You may be scared that making it so easily available will cause more pregnancies and disease rates to go up. Not only are these fears unnecessary but there are great benefits to making contraception available.
One of the main fears of making contraception easily accessible to teenagers is that teens will automatically think “Now that I have access to things that can prevent pregnancy, I can have as much sex as I want, and I do not have to be afraid of getting pregnant now, so I am going to have a lot of sex.” This is an understandable assumption, but is untrue. A study was done that included New York City schools and Chicago schools. Both school systems are very much alike. At the beginning of this study “ [both] school system[s], [were] a large, unified urban system that, [were] ethnically diverse,...[had] a high dropout rate, provide[d] HIV/AIDS education... [and did] not make condoms available to students” (Guttmacher, S.). The NYC School system then had a long and tiresome battle in deciding whether or not to make contraception accessible to teenagers through their school system, but eventually it was decided to make contraception readily available to their students. A study was done before and after this decision was made. Before the contraception was made available to the NYC students, “the proportions of students...who were sexually active were the same in both NYC and Chicago” and after the contraception was made available “New York students,... [still] reported equal rates of sexual activity but higher rates of condom use [than Chicago]” (Guttmacher, S.). Not only did the sexual activity NOT go up , but...

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...Cited

“Birth Control Pills- Types, Effectiveness, and Side Effects of Birth Control Pills.” WebMD. WebMD, 26 Jan. Web. 10 Nov. 2013.

Feldmann, Linda. "US Teen Births Fall to Historic Low: What Has Been Helping." Christian Science Monitor. 06 Sep 2013: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 07 Nov 2013.

“IUD”. IUD. Teens Health. Web. November 7, 2013.

Guttmacher, S., L. Lieberman, D. Ward, N. Freudenberg, A. Radosh, and D. Des Jarlais. "Condom Availability in New York City Public High Schools: Relationships to Condom Use and Sexual Behavior." American Journal of Public Health 87.9 (1997): 1427-433. Print.

"The Truth About Abstinence-Only Programs." The Truth About Abstinence-Only Programs. Advocates for Youth, 2008. Web. 13 Nov. 2013. .

“Why All Medicines Have Side Effects?” Physics Forums RSS. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.

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