Teen Sexual Rights

Some adults do not want young people to get information about sexual health because they do not think young people can be trusted to make their own decisions. But, when teens have to rely on incomplete or inaccurate information, it is even harder for them to make responsible decisions about having sex, using contraception, and protecting themselves from sexually transmitted diseases. Teens do not even have basic understanding of human anatomy and how and when a woman can get pregnant. The result is that young people continue to have unsafe sex and teen pregnancy rates remain high in the United States. According to Deborah M. Roffman in "Parents Should Talk to Their Children About Sexual Values," "teens are becoming sexually active at young ages" so many of their parents are surprised at their children's sexual precociousness. In fact, parents need to become aware of the mixed messages their children are receiving and talk to them about their sexual values.

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Children need and look for guidance, limits, and values from their parents. While abstinence is an important message, I think teens must be given not only sex and abstinence-only educations by their teachers and parents but also all their abortion rights in order to make responsible choices if and when they decide to become sexually active.

Most people misunderstood youth's sex behaviors. If you are a parent or a teacher, can you put aside for a short time your preconceptions of how you think your children feel about their sexual identity and responsibilities? Unfortunately, if you are a teenager in today's America, you will be automatically presumed to have casual and premarital sex. In "Premarital Teen Sex Is Normal", Eric Zorn writes, "out of 3,000 engaged couples who responded, just 4 percent of the women and 1 percent of the men...