Teenage Pregnancies

Like adults, young people are made up of cross-divisions of society and their backgrounds, personality, experiences and maturity can often determine whether they are old enough to handle sex and more adult emotions or not. After all, you would suddenly be responsible for another human being.

So let us examine some of these popular arguments for and against the current ‘age of consent’ a bit more closely.

The results would probably allow society to gage how effective the current law and its application on young people is, but not necessarily reinforce it, as no matter what laws exist, certain people will break them if they do not appreciate why they are there in the first place. However this doesn’t necessarily mean the end of your life or freedom. ” – yes this is indeed a concern, a big concern, where the consequences could be devastating. There is also the resulting stigma or name calling, that can have devastating consequences on young girls in particular, when it becomes common knowledge that she is having ‘under age sex’. Other popular anti-age of consent argument were: “it is a potentially enjoyable experience that they are being denied” and "it enables people to express themselves and their feelings early in life and not feel ashamed or inhibited about sex or sensitivity as they get older” – these statements may well be true of a lot of young people who are eager to rush into the experience of having sex with another, based upon all they have heard or seen from others. Many of these have sadly been based upon unfortunate consequences of under age sex, but nevertheless serve to reinforce these arguments amongst which are: teenage pregnancies – requiring many girls to drop out of school, give up their education and ‘rob’ themselves of their youthful and social years; on the back of this, an early loss of innocence – which many young people are not yet ready for, particularly when they are suddenly expected to transfer from child to adult overnight; peer pressure – which again forces a child to effectively progress to another stage of life that they are not necessarily ready for; isolation and expulsion from the family unit for ‘bringing shame upon them’; this could lead onto homelessness, potential drug abuse and prostitution as a ‘way out’, in addition to unwanted attention from paedophiles; a lack of sexual education and protection could lead to sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS, Hepatitis or other health problems later in life like cervical cancer; child abuse resulting from a lack of maturity or responsibility for a teenage couple coping with sudden parenthood;……and again the list goes on.

In debating the pros and cons of lowering the age of consent, all of the above scenarios should be put under the spotlight. Typically one would expect such a child to take full advantage of her childhood and participate in sexually activity after she became a legal adult or women. back; there is less peer pressure on you to ‘do it whilst at school’; you can, through experimenting, decide on your sexuality and an early age;….

I should point out that either of these cases could end up with dire or pleasurable consequences. The former girl could well turn out to be too overprotected and unable to fully commit to someone emotionally outside the family, or even rebel from what she has been brought up to be the ‘norm’ - digressing into anti-social behaviour.