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Sex Education Vs. Abstinence In California

Introduction

In the 1950's society as a whole was more conservative than it is today, there were many social stigmas attached to activities which were not approved, persons who engaged in these activities were often looked down upon. Teen pregnancy was one of those activities which carried a social stigma. A modern example of this can be seen on the television show Desperate Housewives in which Bree Van De Kamp's daughter Danielle becomes pregnant and her parents send her away to a facility for pregnant girls before anyone else finds out. In the meanwhile Bree & her husband travel to Europe and upon their return they begin to pretend as if Bree is pregnant, timing this fake pregnancy with their daughter's real pregnancy in hopes of fooling everyone that their daughter's baby is really theirs and avoiding any negative social stigma attached with having a pregnant teenager. In this day and time teen pregnancy is becoming common place, society is accepting that teenagers are having sex younger, with who they want and as much as they want, resulting in teen pregnancy becoming more prevalent. Teenagers seem to be oblivious to the risks and dangers of having unprotected sex with multiple partners, often there are outbreaks of sexually transmitted infections in schools and also the rates of teen pregnancy have been on a rise. In 1996 teen pregnancy rates for Merced County & San Joaquin were 84.4, 41.8 per 1000 girls ages 12-18. Tuolumne County reported 63 girls who gave birth within the same age category; these are just a few statistics for the San Joaquin Valley in California. Reasons for these rates have been proposed, one has been that there is only government funding provided to schools which teach abstinence only programs and this is a problem because these programs only highlight the failures of using condoms and other forms of protection instead to teaching students how to use them and so for kids who aren't abstaining they are not protecting themselves....