Our girls and STDs
Unbelievable. Or not.
CHICAGO (AP) - At least one in four teenage girls nationwide has a sexually transmitted disease, or more than 3 million teens, according to the first study of its kind in this age group.A virus that causes cervical cancer is by far the most common sexually transmitted infection in teen girls aged 14 to 19, while the highest overall prevalence is among black girls—nearly half the blacks studied had at least one STD. That rate compared with 20 percent among both whites and Mexican-American teens, the study from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.
About half of the girls acknowledged ever having sex; among them, the rate was 40 percent. While some teens define sex as only intercourse, other types of intimate behavior including oral sex can spread some infections.
Labels: Sex
posted by Matt Friedeman at
6:24 PM
6 Comments:
All the more reason to support a robust safe sex curriculum in school.
By safe sex, I guess you mean more effective condom usage. If you were to dig into this, you would see that at the top of all STD lists is HPV. This virus is NOT stopped by the usage of a condom. So, a robust safe sex curriculum would not have a positive effect on this. Further research would show that about 40% of the girls that had been sexually active had an STD. I wonder how many girls, that have been abstinent, have contracted one of these diseases. I would bet it is significantly less than 1%.
What we do know for certain, confirmed by multiple studies, is that a robust sex ed with safe sex information reduces the rate of teenage sexual activity in the long term and drastically reduces the rate of STDs. We also know that abstinence only education delays the onset of sexual activity but drastically increases the rates of unsafe sex once they start, which they do at almost identical rates eventually.
Safe sex education prevents STDs and saves lives. Abstinence only increases STDs. I’m sorry if anyone finds this inconvenient. As to the point about HPV, it’s funny you mentioned one out of many. My point still stands for all the rest, and luckily enough we have a safe and effective vaccine for that cancer causing STD, that is, unless certain groups in the religious right are still fighting against it.
So what you are saying is that sex ed is better than abstinence in preventing STDs. 18% of the girls have HPV while a total of 6.5% have others, but that is OK because there is a vaccine for HPV. Teaching children about the ramifications of sex outside of marriage (oh my gosh, there is one of those ignernt Christians making a post on a Christian blog) would be the best kind of sex ed. Most of us are not against sex ed, most of us have just grown up and seen what happens when we turn our children over to "well-meaning" educators that just know kids cannot control their overwhelming urges. Safe sex is false advertising and the sooner this is passed on to our children, the sooner they will be able to truly protect themselves.
No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying safe sex education is far better than abstinence only education.
Wouldn't it have been nice if your god could have forseen all of this and made sure that a sex drive didn't kick in till age 25 or 30?
Giving 12-13 year old kids a sex drive is like giving a 2 year old a loaded gun (no pun intended).
Silly god.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home