by Bryanna Ortega

“Oh shit,” thought Melanie Ramos as she stared down at the two little pink lines.  In July of 1998, Ortega got the news that no 18-year-old ever wants to get: that she was pregnant. She had just finished her freshman year of college and was excited to start her sophomore year when she found out. She first told the father, Jorge Ortega, immediately.

“He was so scared, he cried,” Ramos said, thinking back on the moment she first told him. “Although, he took it better than our parents did. They were shocked and really disappointed in us. My parents thought it was a part of a plot to get married. The first thing my father said to me was ‘If you guys wanted to get married why didn’t you just tell us?’” She chuckled at the memory. “Looking back, I can’t blame them for their reaction, we were young,” she said. In the time that Ramos grew up in, marriage was seen as the only option for teen parents. Ramos remembers her now-father-in-law telling them, “Well, are we getting rid of it or are we having a wedding?” It was decided that she and Ortega would be getting married that August. According to the CDC, in 2015, a total of 229,715 babies were born to women aged 15–19, and this makes one wonder why there are so many teen pregnancies. The reasons for this are that teen pregnancy is glamorized in the media, the sex education taught at school is lacking in content and accuracy, parents are afraid to talk with their teens, and contraceptives are not readily available.
As a society that is so hell-bent on shaming young moms, you would think we would make it easy to prevent pregnancies from happening, but that is not the case. According to AdvocatesForYouth.org, 1 million teenage girls get pregnant every year, and a lot of them happen because teens aren’t properly informed and therefore don’t have the knowledge to protect themselves. In the United States, only 24 states require that sex ed is taught in schools, and even in those states, there is no guarantee that what is taught is useful, according to Planned Parenthood. Less than half of high schools and only a fifth of middle schools teach health topics that have been approved by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, so millions of students aren’t getting taught about important things such as STDs and how to avoid them. In those 24 states, the content that is taught in the sex ed class is decided by each state’s lawmakers. Only 13 states require that the instruction be medically accurate, and only 18 states require information on birth control to be taught. We would think that our teens are being taught everything they need to be taught at school and to learn that this isn’t true is shocking. How can we not give the teens information they need to not only keep themselves safe from STDs but to also prevent an unwanted pregnancy, and then judge them for becoming pregnant? While we are slightly better off than other countries where sex education is almost nonexistent, we should still be better preparing the students for sex. According to the Nordic African Institute, Africa has the highest rate of people living with HIV in the world! The worst part is that the general knowledge of it is low. Another problem is that the schools that are teaching about abstinence as the only way are withholding important information these students need. They believe that not giving them the information on sex will keep them from having it, which is extremely dangerous, because they do not have the information needed to stay safe. According to RethinkingSchools.com, a lot of those “abstinence only” schools use scare tactics to get their point across. These tactics don’t work because the students don’t learn anything and are falsely scared of sex. We shouldn’t teach students to fear sex, we need to them to know the dangers but they should also know how to protect themselves from said dangers so sex is enjoyable should they choose to have.
Another way to prevent teen pregnancies is for condoms to be given out to students in school. Sexually active students that are given condoms in school are more likely to report using them, according to AdvocatesForYouth.org, but only 418 out of the thousands of public schools in the U.S. make condoms available to students. In 81 percent of schools, some type of parental consent is required before a student can acquire a condom. In 71 percent of the schools, all students have access to condoms, except those whose parents deny permission in writing (“opt-out”). In 10 percent of schools, students have access only with written permission of their parents (“opt-in”). Schools that don’t give out condoms believe that doing so will give students the idea to have sex, when in reality that is simply not true: if teens want to have sex they will, often regardless of if they are safe or not. The 1995 Risk Behavior Survey found that 51% of high schoolers have had sex, and only 54% of sexually active teens reported using a condom the last time they had sex. For teens to have safe sex they need to have access to protection, and when they can’t get that at school, their only option is to buy their own, which is not even an option for some of them. The barriers teens may face when trying to obtain a common can include confidentiality, cost, transportation, embarrassment, objection by a partner, and the perception that the risks of pregnancy and infection are low. Condoms were behind the counter in 83 percent of all convenience stores and 15 percent of drugstores, and teens may be too shy or embarrassed to go up and ask for them. Females asking for help in locating and/or purchasing condoms encountered resistance or condemnation from clerk’s 27 percent of the time, compared to 10 percent for male teens. How can we expect teens to protect themselves when we make it so difficult for them to do so?
The blame for teenager’s lack of knowledge of sex doesn’t completely rest on schools not teaching them: their parents are also at fault. The sex talk is something every parent should give their child to ensure they are properly prepared should they make the decision to have sex. According to Planned Parenthood, eighty-two percent of parents have talked to their children about topics related to sexuality, but when it comes to tougher, more complicated topics, many teens are not getting the information they need to delay sex and prevent pregnancy. Only 60% of them even mention birth control, the most important part.
The struggle of a teen mom is intense: they have to be a mother, finish school, deal with the father of the child (who come with their own list of stresses), the feeling of not being as free to do as they please as their friends do, and get a job to support themselves and their child. It is really difficult for a teen mom to graduate high school, let alone go to college as my mother, Ramos, experienced when she dropped out of college when she became pregnant with me. According to Time.com, only 40 percent of teen mothers graduate high school, and fewer than 2% finish college by the time they are 30. Of 1.3 million high school dropouts, 30 percent of girls cite pregnancy or parenthood as a key reason they left school, says ProgressivePolicy.org. When it comes to support for these girls, communities are really lacking. The only real resources we offer them is support groups, welfare, food stamps, and The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children otherwise known as WIC. According to the USDA, WIC provides healthcare, supplemental food, and nutrition education to low-income mothers and children up to age 5 years old. While these resources are pretty good, they aren’t enough to help a young mom completely. The young women going through this are usually not with the father of their child: DoSomething.org says that 8 out of 10 teen dads don’t marry the mother of their child, so they are going through this with an incredibly small support system.
Ashley McHenry knows firsthand the struggle of being a teen mom today. She was 19 years old when she found out she would be expecting her first child in August of 2017. “I was completely shocked,” McHenry told me as we sat in her kitchen while her baby played on the floor, “I didn’t know what to do. My parents completely flipped out, my mom didn’t speak to me for like a week.” She describes telling the father of the baby, Omar Morales, saying, “He was really surprised and a little mad. It was crazy though, he was more upset that I was forcing him to tell his mom than anything else. We fought a lot about what he should do. He actually managed to keep it from her for a few more months and he told me that she just wanted nothing to do with the baby and that was why she hadn’t called.” After she found out, she went to the doctor to confirm the pregnancy, and her parents tried to force her to get an abortion. “At first I was going to do it because I had so many people telling me I had to: Omar, my mom, but I just couldn’t,” she said. “I couldn’t go through with it. I told them no on the day before the appointment. They were mad, my mom accused me of keeping it to trap Omar, but I felt in my heart that this was the right thing to do. It was the best decision I ever made.” McHenry and Morales aren’t together: they broke up shortly before the birth and he has very little to do with the baby, by his own choice. But being a single mother did not stop her from doing what she needed to do. She gave birth to Rileigh McHenry Morales in January 2018 and continued to community college, which she was already enrolled in, without skipping a beat. She has, however, faced a lot of discrimination for being a teen mom, despite her accomplishments. She has a “baby face,” so she is often thought to be a lot younger than she actually is. Whenever she goes out with her daughter she gets stared at, questioned, and lectured about how she is “too young” and that she “threw her life away.” Even as she is doing the impossible and being a full-time mother while being a full-time student, she is still facing harsh judgments from her peers and strangers. “I definitely blame my pregnancy on my stupidity,” McHenry says. “ I was too scared to buy condoms in public and I didn’t want to make Omar get them. I was scared he would think less of me if I refused to have sex without them. I have definitely learned my lesson.”
There is no doubt that teen pregnancy is a problem that probably isn’t going to go away completely but there is a lot that can be done. We need to change our education system and get these kids the information they need to stay safe. We also have to find a way to make contraceptives more available to teens. While there is nothing we can do about the media and the way teen pregnancy is portrayed, we can have conversations with our teens, talking to them about sex and the realities of teen pregnancy can help them realize the importance of protecting themselves. We have to work harder to prevent unwanted pregnancies and to help our kids stay kids for a little while longer. Youth is something that shouldn’t be ruined with a pregnancy or STD. For teens everywhere considering having sex, Ramos said it best: “Get informed and protect yourself.”