Stop Teen Pregnancy

Teen Pregnancy Article 1: Intro

Introduction†

Imagine that you are an administrator responsible for the education and development of the teenage population of a city. Currently 10% of all girls in the city, ages 15 to 17, give birth. Most of these teenage mothers do not continue to get their high school diploma and consequently will have difficulty gaining employment. Because of their poor employment options, most mothers most rely on welfare. Finally, in the inner city environment, the pregnant teens do not have the same pressures to go to college or
marry as teens in sub-urban environments. The teenage mothers seek support in matriarchies, consisting of relatives and friends who probably all were teen mothers. Thus teenage parenting continues its self – perpetuating cycle, with tremendous social costs. This is the situation the Lawrence Paquin School in Baltimore faced and what inspired many to support the school’s policy that supplies its students with Norplant birth control systems.

This paper will investigate the implications of a public policy that distributes long term synthetic hormone birth control methods to minors. For the program to be acceptable, it must fulfill three criteria. The program must be cost effective. Second, the policy must successfully deter teenage pregnancies. Third, any public program should be morally permissible. We should not embrace a policy that cuts costs if it entails violating individuals’ rights. A program that meets the above criteria will be proposed and examined. Then I shall discuss the common objections to such a project and evaluate the overall success of the proposed policy. I will first review both the social costs of teenage pregnancies, and information about the currently
available long term synthetic hormone contraception.

† I would like to thank …