REFLECTION....

Wow!!! my last blog.... well first of all i would like to say that i did enjoy this assignment, even though sometimes i fell behind or struggled over all I'm glad i had the opportunity to do this! I learned so much on teen age pregnancy with every blog i posted.
I am very happy that i chose teenage pregnancy as my topic! i learned so many facts that made me realize how ignorant i was on this topic, and still am. I realized all the problems that come from teenage pregnancy, and how even the government is affected by it. I also learned that being a teen mother is even harder than i thought, there are so many expenses that u have to make, and even with help from the government it is very difficult to provide your child with a good future if your a teen mom. Also i learned that most of teen mothers are left by the father and eventually become single parents, and if they do stay with the father they rarely get married.
Something that i would have done differently would be to make my research more broad. I would have liked to look into abortion, adoption, and birth control. I believe that all those things have a lot to do with teen pregnancy and would have helped me gain more knowledge. Other than that i was pretty satisfied with what i did and what i learned.
If i were to chose one post out all of the ones i did it would diffidently be the survey post. why? Because i learned the most from that post, i learned what opinions from boy, girls, students, and even teachers! Their answers really surprised and shocked me. I did however really like Kathy Williams' response to one of my questions... i asked her why she thought teens had sexual intercourse and she responded "Your hormones start erupting during adolescents so you have a physical desire even though you know its not right, but then you get pressure by friends, and the media is attacking teens by music, movies, and TV by showing a lot of sexual activity so that makes your sexual desire stronger. most teens want to do what they see on TV." i really liked her response because i really agree with her answer!
The hardest part for me was writing the posts... since i always wrote about the same topic i felt as if i was always repeating my self. It became difficult for me towards the end to write about things i hadn't already said. i really felt that i just kept on saying the same thing over and over. The most difficult blog for me was the one on the great debate. This was because i had a hard time finding a great debate... i found plenty but none that really grabbed my attention. At the end i just chose the first one i found because i got tired of looking for the one i liked.
Ironically the easiest part for me was writing the posts. Event though i felt like i was repeating my self, with every blog i was assigned to write i learned something knew that i was sure would be new to the person reading the blog as well. Every blog made me expand my research and learn a new fact. Some of the blogs were difficult but for the most part they weren't that hard. My favorite and easiest blog that i wrote was the poem... even though i struggled coming up with it i enjoyed spending time writing it. I have always like poetry so writing a poem of my own really made the assignment easy and entertaining for me. I did however have problems making the poem make sense and rhyme at the same time. But over all i really enjoyed writing it! It was diffidently my favorite blog!!
Through this topic i learned a lot!! But what got to me the most was when i was looking at some abortion pictures on Google. The pictures brought both anger and sadness to me. Anger for the mothers that decide to abort their child and sadness for the poor little creatures being tortured for something that they had nothing to do with. The way these children are killed is horrible and cruel! What i was really surprised to learn was that babies start developing earlier that 3 months. You see when i first began with this blog i thought that children don't start developing until 3 months of pregnancy, and that is not true. In the pictures that i saw was a picture of an 8 week abortion and u could clearly see the babies body parts. Such as the arms, the legs, the head, and even the fingers!!! this really shocked me!!! through this assignment i learned a lot about teenage pregnancy and i am thankful for having the chance of doing this. i would do this all over again with out thinking it twice this was such a great experience for me and i feel as if my writing improved so much by this!! witch really makes me happy!!

Editorial

The editorial that i read about was written by John C. Sherwood and is titled "Something isn't working in struggle against teen-age pregnancy".



John believes that people in Battle Creek and Calhoun County are just ignoring the fact that so many kids are having kids of their own. He believes that the message just isn't getting across. John says that while Michigan's rates were dropping Battle Creek's were rising. For example, the teen-age birth rate in Battle Creek in 1995 for girls under age 18 was three times higher than the statewide rate. For girls 15 to 19 in Michigan, the birth rate dropped nearly 17 percent from 1991 to 1995 - from 59 per thousand to 49 per thousand. But in Calhoun County, births to 15- to 19-year-old stayed high during those years, at about 70 per thousand.

So what are they doing wrong? He believes the problem is that parents are not being open to their children. Parents are were taught "the less said the better" about subjects such as sex, birth control and pregnancy. However that is obviously not working.John believes parents should talk to their children about these topics instead of just ignoring the fact that there are kids having kids.



I personally agree with John i do think parents and schools are too close on this topic. If children were taught about sex, birth control, and pregnancy, maybe then the pregnancy rates wouldn't be that high. I do trust this author i believe he knows what he is talking about and i would use him as a source, no doubt. His information is very reliable, because he shows example of what he is talking about and explains each point he makes.

statistics

Maine saw the sharpest decline in the nation in teen pregnancy rates during the first half of the1990s, and pregnancy rates continued to decline in Maine and the U.S. from then to 2002. In 2002, the pregnancy rate (per 1,000) for females ages 10-14 was 0.4, for females 15-17 was 20.1 and for females 18-19 was 56.0. Comparable national data is not available due to the inconsistency of reporting across states. According to the Maine Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, 83.8% of pregnancies of Maine women 19 years of age or younger were unintended in 2001.

In 2002, the U.S. teen pregnancy rate was 76.4 pregnancies per 1,000 females aged 15-19. The pie chart below
represents the outcomes of these 757,000 pregnancies. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), indicate that a little more than half of teens aged 15-19 who became pregnant gave birth to their babies. Although 16% of these teens suffered fetal losses, 28% aborted them.

fact and opinion

The article that i read is called U.S. Teen Births Rise for First Time in Fifteen Years, Renewing Debate FACTS: since 1991 the birth rate had been droping, but on wednesday government statistics said it rose 3 percent from 2005 to 2006. The new birth numbers are based on the 15-19 age group of women,which accounted for most of the 440,000 births to teens in 2006. The rate rose to nearly 42 births per 1,000 in that group, up from 40.5 in 2005. That translates to an extra 20,000 births to teen mothers.
the reports on birth also showed:
*that the U.S. fertility rate is at the highest level since 1971, at 2.1 children. That is an increase of 2 percent from 2005 to 2006.
*total births rose 3 percent to nearly 4.3 million in 2006
*rate of Caesarean-section deliveries aslo rose 3 percent, setting a nwe record of 31 percent of all births. Health officials say the rate, which has risen by about half since 1996, is higher than is medically ncessary. the high C-section rate is believed to at least partly explain why rates of preterm and low-weight births also rose in 2006. Planned deliveries, including thise involving C-sections, are often done before a pregnancy comes to full term, health experts said.

OPINIONS: some of the experts said that they were expecting a jump in the rates. They blame it on increased federal funding for abstinence only health education that doesn't teach teens hot to use a condom and other contraception.
Diana DeGette a U.S. Rep. said that "Congress needs to stop knee-jerk approving abstinence-only funding when it's clear it's not working." she is pushing on more comprehinsive sex education.
Planned Parenthood officials added that abstinence-only programs do not cause a decrease in teenage sexual activity.
John Santell who is a professor of population and family health at Columbia University's school of public health said that decreased condom use and increased sexual activity are two likely explanations for the higher teen birth rate.


MY OPINION: i believe that sex education should be more broad and more educational on ways to prevent pregnancy and STD's. Abstinence is also something important to be taught, however if it is clear that teens are still sexually active no matter how much we're told not to then the government should start think about updating schools health class. If the U.S. is o worried about rates rising then the should start doing something about it.

peom

me dijiste que you loved me con todo tu corazon
pero ahora te as marchado sin motivo, sin razon
me dijiste que to you i meant the world
tu eras mi baby y yo tu girl.
mi isiste mil promesas and none came true
que tonta fui when i believed in you.
you asked me to marry you to be your wife
and promised you'd protect me for the rest of my life
pero as soon as i told u que estaba embarazada
tu fuiste de mi vida sin decirme nada!
eres un cobarde verguenza deviras tener
me dejaste sola sin idea de que hacer
my family don't care i can't count with their support
asta me dijieron que the best thing i can do is to abort.
pero sabes que voy a salir adelante
guste a quien le guste y al que no le guste que se aguante!
i'm having my baby and i know i'll be fine
por que con la ayuda de Dios todo es possible.

controversial Issue

The greatest controversial issue on teen pregnancy is whether to abort the baby or not. Abortion is such a controversial issue not only in public views but aswell in religious views. The catholic church consider abortion murder. We believe that a baby is a human being no matter how many months or weeks pregnant the mother might be. Also our belief is that if you have no money to support a child or to young it is better if you have the child and give it up for adoption. However Kenneth Cauthen thinks that "Pro-life advocates ought to promote effective birth control methods. Pro-choice advocates ought to encourage sexually responsible behavior, including abstinence. What if they joined hands in a common crusade against unwanted pregnancies?"
the reason that people support abortion is because they belive the baby develops after three months, whitch means they are not killing the baby. They also think abortion is ok because that way the government saves money. Another reason they support abortion is because they feel its the mothers choice whether or not to abort.
My belief is that abortion is murder and that if a girl feels old enough to be sexualy active they should also feel old enough to have the baby. They need to deal with the consequences of their actions.

Survey

For this survey i asked students around our school question that i myself was wondering and these were their answers....

~Do u believe that teen pregnancy is an issue?


Ariane Montez- "It always has been."

Crisol Tellez- "Yes i think it is! I know lots of girls that got pregnant."

Daisy Tena- "Yes"



~Why do u think teen get pregnant?


Crisol tellez- "Cuz they are having 2 much sex and they need 2 stop and they dont know how or
where 2 get protection."

Ariane Montez- "Cus of boredom or laziness. Cus sometimes pregnancy happens cus ppl r lazy 2 put on condoms or watevr."

Maritza Casas- "Because girls are dumb and they believe any thing a guy tells them."

Rebecca Dolores-" I don't know maybe cuz they 4get 2 use protection or maybe cuz they r in love that they don't care"



~Why do think teens have sexual intercourse?

Carlos Valdez- "In my opinion i think that they become sexually active because of exposure of sexual content in the Internet or TV"

Estephania Moron-"Cuz they have no good values from home"

Kathy Williams-" Your hormones start erupting during adolescents so you have a physical desire even though you know its not right, but then you get pressure by friends, and the media is attacking teens by music, movies, and TV by showing a lot of sexual activity so that makes your sexual desire stronger. most teens want to do what they see on TV."