Teen Pregnancy: Forced Acceptance?

In a very popular city in Texas, a local Wal-mart is the perfect location to see teenaged pregnancy. There are many teenagers walking around the city that are pregnant, or already have a child and one thing that this writer notices is, how no one seems to be bothered by it. It seems more common these days for a teenager to become pregnant, than an adult over the age of 23 for the first time. Most families are started at an extremely young age, before the age of 21 and marriages begin before the age of 21 and seem to end before age 25. The reason? Most marriage are started "for the child", and not for "love".

Though there are numerous reasons why a teenaged pregnancy cannot be prevented, the most common being rape, there are still moments where a teenager can decide not to get themselves into this position. A woman who is now twenty-seven, chose to be abstinent until she was 17. From age 17 until 23, every male she was with would be told to wear a condom, and she used birth control whether by pill, injection, or patch. It wasn't until she was married that she and her husband stopped using condoms, and even after that she stayed on birth control, and had her first child at age 27. These decisions were simple for her, she did not want to ruin her life at an early age. She wanted to go to college, and originally intended on waiting until marriage to lose her virginity. But hormones always have a way of making someone think differently. She never let a man pressure her into unprotected sex, and as such never contracted an STD as well. So why was it easier for her to make these decisions, than someone else?

Perhaps it's the parenting. In the Texas city written about above, there is a family observed in an apartment complex. In a 600 square foot apartment, there are 10 people living in it. Two adult females, two girls under the age of 5, one teenaged boy and the rest are teenaged and pre-teenaged girls. Every day, the children are overheard using profanity, screaming, yelling, fighting, and more importantly they are harassing and antagonizing their neighbors proudly. The mother of these children joins in with the harassment, she doesn't discipline them in any way, thinking instead the neighbors need to stop caring that they can hear her children using the "N" word over their own televisions and more. The youngest of the family is one of the teenaged girls' child, and she is rarely tended to properly. But this doesn't seem to be a big deal, it doesn't seem to matter to anyone. This family uses government aid for all the children including Food assistance, cash assistance, and more. So a question does arise: Is this accepted merely because the children are all bringing in "free aid"? Why wasn't this teenager on birth control, considering she has medicaid and can for free get the pill or even the injection?

If your daughter was aged 15 to 17 and came to you saying she was pregnant, how would you react? What if your son came to you saying his girlfriend was pregnant, how would you feel? Would you let the teenaged child keep the baby, or have them put it up for adoption? These days there are so many wanting to adopt, would you be willing to let a good family have a child? Or let your child raise a child? Why is the latter more common than the first? Why are more children raising children? Why aren't children being smarter and using birth control?

President Obama has announced recently that he intends to make birth control free for all women, and people as well as insurance companies are fighting this. Why? It isn't mandatory, so for religious purposes obviously you don't have to use it. But when a family of 10 has a baby by one of the children included in that number, shouldn't they be using it? Why do people think it's a bad idea to allow teenagers, women, and even possibly men use protection against pregnancy for free, when it can slow birth rates, slow the federal aid for welfare, food assistance, section 8, hud housing, and more?

Just a few thoughts...