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Teen Pregnancy: Pregnancy Statistics Teen, Pregnancy Symptom Teen, Help Pregnancy Teen, Essay Pregnancy Teen

Teen pregnancy is an issue that everyone should be concerned about.  A teen pregnancy is usually an unplanned, unwelcome consequence that occurs when teenagers engage in unprotected sex without stopping to think what the result of their actions could be.

Teen girls are not emotionally, financially, and sometimes not physically able to care for a newborn baby.  Many times, if the teen decides to have the baby, the burden for it’s’ care is placed on the grandparents, as the teen goes off about their normal, everyday teenage activities.  Sometimes, the grandparents are unwilling, or maybe unable to raise another child, and this presents quite a problem for the pregnant teenager.

Teen girls who have and decide to keep their baby usually encounter many problems.Some of these problems are as follows:

• Drop out of school, which results in little or no secondary level education.  This in turn leads to problems later in life when the young lady is unable to secure a good paying job.
• Loses friends due to the fact that there is no longer any personal time; the girls’ time is consumed by caring for the new baby.  This can lead to emotional problems such as depression and anxiety.
• If the young girl is trying to raise the baby alone, without support from the babies’ father, this too can lead to problems of isolation and despair.

Statistically speaking, over 1 million teenage girls become pregnant every single year.  When young girls decide to let the pregnancy continue, there can be adverse effects on the baby.  Some of these include:

• Intestinal problems at birth
• Low birth-weight
• Respiratory distress syndrome at birth
• Lungs and other vital organs may be underdeveloped
• Bleeding in the brain

While there are certainly many risks to the baby at the time of birth that is born to a teenage mother, they also face risks as they grow and become older children.  They are more at risk for abuse and neglect, they are at a higher risk of becoming teen parents themselves, they are more apt to suffer from poor economic circumstances, as well as many other factors.

There are many nationwide programs whose main cause is to work at lowering the number of teenage pregnancies that occur.  Some of these programs council young girls who are already sexually active, while other programs focus on teenagers who have to become sexually active.  Many schools across the nation have also began to implement sexual education classes into the curriculum, in an attempt to teach teens that sex has many consequences, and that most teens are not able to deal with them effectively.

There are also many programs that use teenage mothers as spokespeople; they are able to tell other teenagers firsthand what happens when a teenager gets pregnant and keeps the baby.  Many times, these programs are the most effective, as young teens are better able to relate to someone of their own age; someone they feel that they are on the same level with.

Abstinence is also a virtue that is being taught, but with 24% of teenage girls already being sexually active by the time they reach high school, this is something that hasn’t shown much hope within a diverse group.

It is important for all teenagers; girls as well as boys, to understand what being sexually active means, and that sometimes, pregnancy and a baby can be the result of unprotected, premarital sex.  Teenage pregnancy has the potential to reach epidemic proportions unless all of us, as a collective group, be proactive in teaching teens how to be responsible when it comes to sex.