What's happening?

I remember the day my mom called me into her room to tell me that my friend was pregnant. I was 17 years old; so was my friend. I was finishing up my senior year of high school; so was she. I was raised in a home where we were taught that sex was a beautiful thing, but something you waited to have until you were married; so was she.

According to the Natality Data File from the National Vital Statistics System, "The U.S. teen birth rate declined 9 percent from 2009 to 2010, reaching a historic low at 34.3 births per 1,000 women aged 15–19; the rate dropped 44 percent from 1991 through 2010."

Although thousands of teenage girls are getting pregnant and having babies out of wedlock, that number is decreasing. I think this is a good thing, although just because the number of babies born to teenagers has gone down, it doesn't mean that the number of teens having premarital sex has gone down.

Since the 1940s, the number of babies born to teens has been decreasing. However, the number of teens having sex is still high. According to the CDC, 47.4% of high school students had ever had sexual intercourse. That's almost half of all those high school kids!

So my question is, if so many kids are out there "doing it," why is it that the number of teen pregnancies and births is steadily declining? I think this is because birth control is so much more accessible to kids than it has been in the past. Just a few days ago, the FDA approved that Plan B, a "morning-after" contraceptive be available to purchase over the counter to anyone aged 15 and over.

It's pills like this, pills that are so readily accessible to teenagers, that convince kids that premarital sex is okay. That they can do what they want and not have any consequences because they can just take a pill that will "fix" everything.

They may not be having babies, but there are still other factors to consider. Emotional side effects as well as physical effects are still cause for concern.

STDs anyone?