Cristina Page: The Jamie Lynn Generation - (concerning teen pregnancy not Hispanic specific but worth the read)

In fact, Jamie Lynn Spears and her pregnant peers are the victims of a one and half billion dollar social experiment: the national implementation of the abstinence until marriage policy. For the duration of the Bush administration, the policy of preference is to simply tell teens not to have sex before marriage. Like the Just Say No to drugs campaigns of the Reagan years, it too has been a colossal failure. Abstinence-only programs have not succeeded in convincing kids not to have sex, but have led many not to use contraception. To scare kids kids away sexual activity, abstinence-only programs focus on the dangers of sex. If contraception is ever mentioned it is to highlight (and exaggerate) its failure rates. If a girl is told that even if her boyfriend uses a condom she’ll get pregnant once every seven times -as the popular abstinence program “Choosing the Best Way” instructs-the incentive to use one dissipates.”*

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