About 750,000 Americans ages 15 to 19 years old become pregnant every year. Although most experts agree that there is a need to teach teenagers about sex and contraception, how to do that remains controversial. Now two new studies are adding to the controversy.
A study published in the journal
Pediatrics found that the majority of sexually active teenage girls had heard of the Emergency Contraception Pill but did not know how to use it.
Emergency Contraception, sometimes known as the "morning after" pill, can prevent conception if taken within five days of unprotected intercourse.
Researchers interviewed African-American girls at a children's hospital in Philadelphia and found that half of them had heard of this pill. However, the majority of the sexually active teens did not understand when to take it.
A second study published in
Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health found that teens do not necessarily believe that abstinence and sexual activity are opposites.
"Kids can believe in abstinence, but also intend to have sex," said N. Tatiana Masters, a doctoral candidate at Washington University and author of the study.
She and her colleagues studied 365 students ages 12 to 15 years old before and after they took part in an intervention designed to reduce risky sexual practices. A year after the program, the percentage of boys who were sexually active increased from 11 percent to 22 percent. Among girls, the increase was from 4 percent to 12 percent. The teens who intended to abstain from sex at the beginning of the study were less likely to engage in it by the end of the study.
However, the story was more complex than that. The ones who felt most strongly about either abstaining or participating in sex were the ones most likely to become sexually active.
Labels: school, sex-education, birth-control
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