It wouldn't happen if we had better sex education in the US. Like, yes their dumb but at the same time adults in charge should teach teenagers about safe sex.
Teenagers are often horrible parents, obviously there's exceptions but when I went to high school teenage girls who had babies left their kids in their parents hands. They wanted nothing to do with their kids, it's really sad.
It's the teenagers choice though, I'll say this. They are old enough to make the decision to have a kid or not.
Regardless of how I feel about the Pro-life vs Choice issue, the sex education in the United States isn't as bad as you're making it out. I'm probably older than you and I went to Catholic schools from 3rd grade-12th grade, so my access to good sexual education was probably more limited than yours. I'm not calling you out or saying you're an asshole, I'm just bringing up this point because I hear that a lot about lack of sex ed in the USA and I don't think its that bad. Room for improvement, sure, but its lacking is a bad excuse for an unwanted teenage pregnancy imo.
Though the education they gave us was largely clinical, it spent a lot of time dealing with the social issues as well. Being a Roman Catholic institution, naturally they pointed out that the only 100% successful way to avoid pregnancy was abstinence. They brought up condoms, birth control pills, nuva rings, tiny rods surgically implanted into a woman's arm, morning after pills, basically all of the various methods of birth control, and the effectiveness of them. They also told us that no matter how effective they are people still get pregnant when using birth control.
We started sex ed in 5th grade, so around 10-11 years old, which I personally think is just about the right age. Prepubescent but old enough and smart enough at that age to be able to understand this stuff. We would do it every year throughout middle school at a certain point in the year, in science class. When I got to high school, we did it again but spread out over more classes. In Biology, naturally, they taught about the physical and clinical aspects of sexuality. In Health, we had a chubby yet ripped coach tell us about STD's and joke about who in the class probably had them (I'm serious, the coaches did this, they were fucking nuts lol). Finally, in Religion class, we talked about the social and moral implications of the subject.
It turned out that we had a lot of sex education, now that this has me thinking about it, which is all fine and good. I don't think we need to teach 4 year old's about sex as some proponents think, and I don't think having much more sexual education is really going to stop unwanted youth pregnancies. All the education in the world isn't going to change a hormonal teenager's mind when it comes right down to it. That being said, I still think there's room for improvement, but I have to stand up for the U.S.A.'s standard of Sex Ed. If I got a pretty good education at a Roman Catholic school, I know you guys got an even more comprehensive education at the public schools.
Plus, just about everybody has internet access in some capacity now. Everything you need to know about birth control and sexual health you can find there if a young person is thinking about having sex but doesn't have a lot of information on the subject. I do believe that the structure and organization that a teacher in a classroom provides is better than just going at it all haphazardly on your own using Google though.
. It's impossible to adopt unless your rich or upper middle class. I get not giving kids to shady people but middle and lower class families should be able to adopt kids without all the bullshit that goes along with it.
This is just blatantly untrue. I worked with a guy who had adopted 2 kids and he was definitely lower class, maybe dipped into very low middle class on his best years. Another family that I lived next door to a few years back were again, lower middle class, and they adopted a little boy and had two kids of their own. It isn't easy to just adopt a child, nor should it be. This is a person's life that you are going to control and have complete responsibility for until they are 18 years of age and possibly beyond that. They make it an involved process for this very reason, but it isn't limited to the rich, it is limited to the parents who actually have a deep desire to have a child.
