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Teenage Pregnancy

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Teenage Pregnancy
Aneta Karkut
English 102
Instructor Pols
6 March 2013

Paper #3 How to Stop the Rise of Teenage Pregnancy

I turn on my television and an MTV show is on. I spend a little time watching it, though I’m not sure what I am watching. There are girls that look my age, and I see they have children. They are arguing with their boyfriends and their parents, but most look happy overall. A commercial comes on it tells me “16 and Pregnant” will be right back. Curious about the name and the concept of this TV show, and why it even was a TV show with that name, I turned to my good friend Google. Off the Wikipedia blurb I discovered, “16 and Pregnant is an MTV reality television series produced by Morgan J. Freeman and Dia Sokol Savage... It follows the stories of pregnant teenage girls in high school dealing with the hardships of teenage pregnancy” (“16 and Pregnant”). My dad walked by and asks what the show is about, I explain; he walked away shaking his head. This was heartbreaking to him. In his years, pregnancy at such a young age was unheard of and the thought of being unmarried? Forget it! It was not acceptable. For my generation? My graduating class had 9 pregnant senior girls, and those were just the ones we knew of. Statistically speaking, it could have been higher. The Center for Disease Disease Control and Prevention says, “More than 360,000 teen girls give birth each year in the United States. One half of teen mothers do not finish high school.” Peggy Peck, a journalist for ABC Health News found that, “In 2006, there were 42 births per 1,000 U.S. teenage girls, which was 4 percent higher than 2005.” It has been reported that, “the United States continues to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and birth among developed countries” (Minnick 1). So why is that? Why as one of the leading countries with some of the best, health care, medications, and doctors are we struggling to reduce pregnancy among adolescents? The CDC recommends 3 solutions to this


Cited: "16 and Pregnant." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 03 Feb. 2013. Web. 05 Mar. 2013. Krisberg, Kim. "Teen Pregnancy Prevention Focusing On Evidence. (Cover Story)." Nation 's Health 40.3 (2010): 1-14. Academic Search Complete. Web. 6 Mar. 2013. Elders, M. Joycelyn. "Coming to Grips With the US Adolescent Birth Rate." American Journal of Public Health Dec. 2012: 2205+. Academic Search Complete. Web. 6 Mar. 2013. Mayo Clinic. "Sex Education: Talking to Your Teen about Sex." Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 18 Nov. 2011. Web. 0 Mar. 2013. Minnick, Dorlisa, J., and Lauren Shandler. "Changing Adolescent Perceptions On Teenage Pregnancy." Children & Schools 33.4 (2011): 241-248. CINAHL Plus with Full Text. Web. 6 Mar. 2013. Peck, Peggy. "Teen Pregnancies On the Rise Again." ABC News. ABC News Network, 27 Jan. 2010. Web. 05 Mar. 2013. "Reducing Teen Pregnancy: Engaging Communities." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 05 July 2012. Web. 05 Mar. 2013. "Teen Pregnancies, Dangers on the Rise." The Sacramento Observer. N.p., 11 June 2011. Web. 06 Mar. 2013.
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