Teen birthrates and rates of AIDS cases among young men have gone up in recent years according to a report released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.According to the CDC, birth rates among teens aged 15 or above had been down since 1991 but spiked in more than half of U.S. states since 2005. The number of AIDS cases in teen boys has nearly doubled while syphilis cases in adolescents aged 15 to 24 has gone up in recent years.
The negative news regarding sexual health in teens has increased scrutiny of abstinence-only programs that were championed by the Bush White House. Teens need "medically accurate, age-appropriate, comprehensive sex education" rather than such a strong emphasis on abstinence-only according to a statement by Planned Parenthood. Conversely, backers of abstinence-only like a group called American Values laid blame on primarily with “a culture obsessed with sex.” (Right and our culture was so prudish and Victorian during the years that teen birthrates and AIDS rates were going down!)
Racial minorities were particularly vulnerable according to the CDC:
"This report identifies a number of concerns regarding the sexual and reproductive health of our nation's young people," Janet Collins, director of CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, said in a news release...Image- BBC News (“A UK software developer has released a "purity ring" application for Apple's iPhone.”)
The study also identified a number of racial/ethnic disparities in the sexual and reproductive health of young Americans. For example, Hispanic teens aged 15 to 19 are much more likely to become pregnant (132.8 births per 1,000 females) than non-Hispanic blacks (128 per 1,000) and non-Hispanic whites (45.2 per 1,000). The study also found that non-Hispanic black youth in all age groups have the highest rates of new HIV and AIDS diagnoses.
Online Sources- ABC News, Guardian UK, Chicago Tribune
2 comments:
I have just checked this website and I have found this website to be very useful and informative. The information that you have given about increasing cases of AIDS among teenage boys is very indeed very useful. It also provides us with the information that Bush'a abstinence only policy has failed to the core. Actually in todays world abstinence only policy is truly impractical. These polices could be followed 100 years back when boys and girls went to different schools and had very less chances of inetracting. But in todays almost all the schools are co-ed which also helps the opposite sexes to come close and thus leading to teenage pregnancy.
This is ironic considering Bush was a conservative.
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