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  #1  
Old 01-08-2009, 09:37 PM
jojapeach jojapeach is offline
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Originally Posted by AKA_Monet View Post
Guess there ain't much to do in Mississippi or all those other states? IDK?
That's the angle I took. I'm also going to blame the economy. With all of the adults being forced to take the fast food, etc. jobs that teens normally take, the teens can't find jobs and find other ways to be (re)productive. I'm sure things are even worse in the smaller towns.
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Old 01-08-2009, 11:20 PM
AKA_Monet AKA_Monet is offline
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Originally Posted by jojapeach View Post
That's the angle I took. I'm also going to blame the economy. With all of the adults being forced to take the fast food, etc. jobs that teens normally take, the teens can't find jobs and find other ways to be (re)productive. I'm sure things are even worse in the smaller towns.
What gets me though, is that if you do have have some level of contraception and/or safer sex protection, you have a public health problem like a wild fire...

So, not just the babies, but the infections... HIV/AIDS did not suddenly end in this country... Mississippi as a state has the worst rate of new HIV/AIDS cases without that much HAART drugs. AND Mississippi's HIV/AIDS cases rival those seen in the poorest 3rd world countries in Africa... Meaning you are safer to catch HIV in some African countries than you are in Mississippi--at least you might get seen and have some form of treatment in some African countries...
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Last edited by AKA_Monet; 01-08-2009 at 11:23 PM.
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Old 01-09-2009, 09:11 PM
Munchkin03 Munchkin03 is offline
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Originally Posted by jojapeach View Post
That's the angle I took. I'm also going to blame the economy. With all of the adults being forced to take the fast food, etc. jobs that teens normally take, the teens can't find jobs and find other ways to be (re)productive. I'm sure things are even worse in the smaller towns.
I'm not going to blame the economy because Mississippi, New Mexico, and other states are ALWAYS scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to this sort of thing. Even 3-4 years ago, when the economy was doing really well--teens in Mississippi were reproducing at a faster rate than NYC subway rats. Perhaps in their communities, single parenthood is seen as "okay." Maybe poverty isn't that big a deal. Maybe they don't read condom boxes, BCP instructions, or they don't listen to their teachers.
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Old 01-09-2009, 11:33 PM
KSUViolet06 KSUViolet06 is offline
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Originally Posted by Munchkin03 View Post
Perhaps in their communities, single parenthood is seen as "okay."
This is very true. In some communities, every girl on the block has a kid (sometimes 2) that they had before before age 19. If you're a young girl growing up in that community, you don't think anything of it. It's normal.

Same with poverty. If you've lived on this block all your life, where every girl is a HS drop out with a baby and on public assistance, you don't look at them as people in poverty because this is what you perceive as normal.
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Last edited by KSUViolet06; 01-09-2009 at 11:52 PM.
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Old 01-10-2009, 12:34 AM
AGDee AGDee is offline
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There is nothing that says that these teens are single parents. I would be interested to see statistics on how many of them are married. In Mississippi, female teens can get married at 15 with parental consent. That's shockingly low to me. These statistics also include 18 and 19 year olds. I would really want to see it more detailed by specific age and marital status.
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Old 01-12-2009, 06:05 PM
madmax madmax is offline
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Originally Posted by AGDee View Post
There is nothing that says that these teens are single parents. I would be interested to see statistics on how many of them are married. In Mississippi, female teens can get married at 15 with parental consent. That's shockingly low to me. These statistics also include 18 and 19 year olds. I would really want to see it more detailed by specific age and marital status.


Do you know many married teenagers?
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Old 01-12-2009, 07:21 PM
AGDee AGDee is offline
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Originally Posted by madmax View Post
Do you know many married teenagers?
Almost everybody in my high school class who didn't go to college got married within a year or two of graduation and had a few kids by the time of our 5 year reunion, so yes, there are married teenagers out there.

I hunted down some statistics, although it was difficult to find. The best I can do is 2000 census data:
There were 891,000 married 15- to 19-year-olds in 2000, up from 598,000 in 1990, when married teens comprised 3.4 percent of all 15- to 19-year-olds. The increase came after a steady decline since 1950, when 9.5 percent of teens were married.
From http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in528755.shtml

I couldn't find any that broke it down by state though.
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Old 01-12-2009, 07:30 PM
KSig RC KSig RC is offline
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Originally Posted by AGDee View Post
Almost everybody in my high school class who didn't go to college got married within a year or two of graduation and had a few kids by the time of our 5 year reunion, so yes, there are married teenagers out there.

I hunted down some statistics, although it was difficult to find. The best I can do is 2000 census data:
There were 891,000 married 15- to 19-year-olds in 2000, up from 598,000 in 1990, when married teens comprised 3.4 percent of all 15- to 19-year-olds. The increase came after a steady decline since 1950, when 9.5 percent of teens were married.
From http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in528755.shtml

I couldn't find any that broke it down by state though.
So it's rare?
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  #9  
Old 01-12-2009, 05:55 PM
madmax madmax is offline
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Originally Posted by KSUViolet06 View Post
This is very true. In some communities, every girl on the block has a kid (sometimes 2) that they had before before age 19. If you're a young girl growing up in that community, you don't think anything of it. It's normal.

Same with poverty. If you've lived on this block all your life, where every girl is a HS drop out with a baby and on public assistance, you don't look at them as people in poverty because this is what you perceive as normal.
You mean the inner cities where the Dems live?
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  #10  
Old 01-13-2009, 07:05 PM
aephi alum aephi alum is offline
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Let's hear it for abstinence-only sex education.

The reality is, teenagers are going to have sex, no matter how often you tell them not to. So they need to be educated that, while abstinence is arguably best, if you do not choose abstinence, you should be using a condom. (Or a diaphragm, or the pill, or something. A condom is best because it also protects against STDs.)

It's also worth noting that seven of these ten states require parental consent, and an eighth (Georgia) requires parental notification, for a minor to get an abortion. If I had been unlucky enough to become pregnant at age 15 (unlikely as I wasn't sexually active back then, and if I had been, I would have insisted on a condom), I could have walked into any abortion clinic in New York and said, "I want an abortion." But if I had lived in Mississippi, where the consent of BOTH parents is required, my uber-religious pro-life parents would have prevented me from getting an abortion. I would have had to carry the pregnancy to term and then either place the child for adoption or wave bye-bye to a college education and a career.
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  #11  
Old 01-13-2009, 10:56 PM
UGAalum94 UGAalum94 is offline
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Originally Posted by aephi alum View Post
It's also worth noting that seven of these ten states require parental consent, and an eighth (Georgia) requires parental notification, for a minor to get an abortion. If I had been unlucky enough to become pregnant at age 15 (unlikely as I wasn't sexually active back then, and if I had been, I would have insisted on a condom), I could have walked into any abortion clinic in New York and said, "I want an abortion." But if I had lived in Mississippi, where the consent of BOTH parents is required, my uber-religious pro-life parents would have prevented me from getting an abortion. I would have had to carry the pregnancy to term and then either place the child for adoption or wave bye-bye to a college education and a career.
I think differences in culture may influence this decision even more that the law itself. I think if you look at abortion rates by states, you don't see a big spike in the rates of abortion of women right over the age at which they can get abortions without parent consent. To me this suggest that the attitude about abortion (or maybe easy availability of abortion) may be different period, rather than the just the parent notification laws.

And going by personal experience with the couple of pregnant teens I've known, they knew where to get condoms or other forms of birth control, and they knew how people got pregnant. Some even knew from close friends exactly how difficult parenting was. That knowledge didn't information their behavior though. The fun of sex and the "it won't happen to me" thinking (as well as "it might be fun to have a kid" thinking in a couple of cases) override the formal instruction they've been giving.
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Old 01-13-2009, 11:19 PM
KSUViolet06 KSUViolet06 is offline
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Originally Posted by UGAalum94 View Post
The fun of sex and the "it won't happen to me" thinking (as well as "it might be fun to have a kid" thinking in a couple of cases) override the formal instruction they've been giving.
This is a BIG part of it. When you talk to kids about getting pregnant, they always say "Well, I'm smarter than Susie, it won't happen to me."
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Old 01-14-2009, 10:15 AM
Honeykiss1974 Honeykiss1974 is offline
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Originally Posted by KSUViolet06 View Post
This is a BIG part of it. When you talk to kids about getting pregnant, they always say "Well, I'm smarter than Susie, it won't happen to me."
ITA! I think this is moreso it than anything else. No one ever thinks the screw up will happen to them because they are "better than that". Teens know how pregnancy occurs and how to prevent it (whether through abstinence or via BC).
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Old 01-13-2009, 11:49 PM
KappaKittyCat KappaKittyCat is offline
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Originally Posted by UGAalum94 View Post
I think differences in culture may influence this decision even more that the law itself. I think if you look at abortion rates by states, you don't see a big spike in the rates of abortion of women right over the age at which they can get abortions without parent consent.
That depends on what data you're looking at. I'm interested to see your sources. Mine say differently.

Stanley Henshaw studied the impacts of Mississippi's parental consent law when it went into effect in 1993. What he found was that fewer 17-year-olds were having abortions, but more 18-year-olds were having late-term abortions: the state's second-trimester abortion rate increased by 19%. This study was published in the May-June edition of Family Planning Perspectives journal.

Ted Joyce, Robert Kaestner and Silvie Coleman studied Texas's parental notification law after it went into effect in 2000 and came to a similar conclusion. Quoting the article, the parental notification law was "associated with increased birth rates and rates of abortion during the second trimester among a subgroup of minors who were 17.50 to 17.74 years of age at the time of conception." This article was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in March 2006.

Quote:
Originally Posted by UGAalum94 View Post
And going by personal experience with the couple of pregnant teens I've known, they knew where to get condoms or other forms of birth control, and they knew how people got pregnant. Some even knew from close friends exactly how difficult parenting was. That knowledge didn't information their behavior though. The fun of sex and the "it won't happen to me" thinking (as well as "it might be fun to have a kid" thinking in a couple of cases) override the formal instruction they've been giving.
I TOTALLY agree with this!
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Old 01-14-2009, 07:23 PM
UGAalum94 UGAalum94 is offline
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Originally Posted by KappaKittyCat View Post
That depends on what data you're looking at. I'm interested to see your sources. Mine say differently.

Stanley Henshaw studied the impacts of Mississippi's parental consent law when it went into effect in 1993. What he found was that fewer 17-year-olds were having abortions, but more 18-year-olds were having late-term abortions: the state's second-trimester abortion rate increased by 19%. This study was published in the May-June edition of Family Planning Perspectives journal.

Ted Joyce, Robert Kaestner and Silvie Coleman studied Texas's parental notification law after it went into effect in 2000 and came to a similar conclusion. Quoting the article, the parental notification law was "associated with increased birth rates and rates of abortion during the second trimester among a subgroup of minors who were 17.50 to 17.74 years of age at the time of conception." This article was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in March 2006.
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/09/12/USTPstats.pdf

It could completely be my not paying enough attention, but when I looked at the most recent data by state it didn't appear that if you worked out the percentage of pregnancies ending in abortion, there was much real difference for the 15-17 vs 18-19 groups. I didn't work out the percentages; I just kind of looked at a couple of numbers. At first, it looks like a huge jump, but then your realize that that many more 18-19 year olds got pregnant to begin with.

Maybe I'm just reading it wrong or maybe the pattern that existed as the laws went into effect didn't continue very long. There's a note at the bottom of one page about estimates for a state with incomplete data perhaps being inaccurate because girls affected by parental consent laws traveled to other states for abortions. When the laws were new, girls may have waited to turn 18. Perhaps later, people advised them to go to the closest state without notification laws.

Mississippi looks like it's about 14% for 15-17 and 16% for 18-19
Texas looks like it's 15% vs. 18%.

Again, this is if I understand what there numbers represent and read the columns correctly when I scrolled down to look at the state.

Last edited by UGAalum94; 01-14-2009 at 07:33 PM.
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