Risks of Teenage Sex

Risks of Teenage Sex

Premarital sex is a huge problem in society today. People everywhere are not waiting until they get married to have sex. The young people having sex are not aware of the consequences and the risks that come with having sex. They just think it is fun and it gives them something to do but sex is a very serious thing. Currently more than 45% of high school females and 48% of high school males have had sexual intercourse. The average age of first intercourse is 17 years for girls and 16 years for boys. However approximately one fourth of all teens report having had intercourse by 15 years of age. Here are three reasons why teenagers should wait to have intercourse; Teenagers have a high possibility of not being able to finish high school if and when they get pregnant, sexually transmitted diseases, and health risks for both the teenage mother and the young child. Pre-marital sex can lead to life threatening circumstances and self destruction.

Sexually Transmitted Diseases are infections that are transmitted through sexual intercourse with another domestic partner. Three million teens are affected by sexually transmitted disease annually out of a 12 million cases reported. Theses include Chlamydia (which can cause sterility), syphilis (which can cause blindness, maternal death, and death of the infant) and HIV (the virus which causes AIDS, which may be fatal to the mother and infant. As many as 1 in 20 teenage girls and women and more than 2 percent of the general population in America are infected with Chlamydia. Most STD's have no symptoms being reason why a lot of cases go untreated leading to the more serious problems. CDC Researchers found that nearly 1 in 20 women between the ages of 14 and 19, 4.6 percent of were infected. In 2003 87,7478 cases of Chlamydia were reported in the United States making it the most commonly reported STD, reported by the CDC.

Becoming a parent is another risk that comes with premarital sex. When a teenager becomes a parent it is done permanently and profoundly alters a teenagers life. Most of the girls forget about their dreams of a happy marriage, college is almost out of the question, graduating high school becomes a goal most teenagers don't have the chance to achieve after a baby while still in high school. Most teenage mothers have to drop out of high school once they get pregnant because they don't want anyone else to know, there grades drop and then they feel worthless so they just figure to drop out thinking it is a better choice than staying in school and getting an education. Most teenagers that engage in premarital sex have poor grades that can lead them to "look for something else to do." Without the education the teenage mother will lack job skills and have a great chance of being unemployed therefore leaving herself and her child to live in poverty or even below the poverty line. Teen mothers are more likely to live in poverty than women who delay childbearing, and over 75 percent of all unmarried teen mothers go on welfare within 5 years of their first child. A 1997 study showed that only 41 percent of teenagers who have children before age 18 go on to graduate from high school compared to 61 percent of teens from similar social and economic backgrounds who did not give birth until ages 20 or 21. Most teenagers are simply not mature enough and knowledgeable enough to take sensible precaution against unwanted pregnancy and unwanted pregnancy forces teenagers to choose between parenthood, abortion (which I firmly disbelieve in) and/or adoption. I believe though that one person can be a high school student and a mother and have a future and achieve future goals.

Another problem with teenagers giving birth is the health risks for the teen mother and her child. In 2002, 9.6 percent of mothers ages 15 to 19 years had a low birth weight baby (under 5.5 pounds) compared to 7.8 percent of all aged mothers. The younger the mothers age the higher the health risks. Low birth weight babies are more than 20 times as likely to die in their first year of life as normal weight babies. Teenage pregnancy has been associated with other medical problems including poor maternal weight gain, premature births, pregnancy induced hypertension, and anemia. Approximately, 14% of infants are born to adolescents 17 years or younger are preterm versus 6% for women 25-29 years of age. The child's