• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Teen pregnancy and disease rates rose sharply during Bush years, agency finds

Middleground

Middleground

2-Lipped Beaver!
DP Veteran
Joined
Jul 15, 2005
Messages
28,133
Reaction score
15,017
Location
Canada's Capital
Gender
Female
Political Leaning
Progressive
I am a strong believer that education, rather than abstinence, is the best way to prevent teen pregnancy, but even I am surprised by these results. According to this article, both teen pregnancies and STDs have sharply risen during Bush's tenure, so I have to ask you why you think the downward trend has swung upward. Does this change your opinion of "yes, abstinence works," or do you believe it to be other underlying factors?

From the article:
Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among a generation of American school girls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage under George Bush's evangelically-driven education policy, according to a new report by the US's major public health body.

In a report that will surprise few of Bush's critics on the issue, the Centres for Disease Control says years of falling rates of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease infections under previous administrations were reversed or stalled in the Bush years. According to the CDC, birth rates among teenagers aged 15 or older had been in decline since 1991 but are up sharply in more than half of American states since 2005. The study also revealed that the number of teenage females with syphilis has risen by nearly half after a significant decrease while a two-decade fall in the gonorrhea infection rate is being reversed. The number of Aids cases in adolescent boys has nearly doubled.

The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.
Click to expand...

US teen pregnancy and syphilis rates rose sharply during George Bush's presidency, Centres for Disease Control finds | World news | guardian.co.uk
 
The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.
Click to expand...

And in related news, the CDC reported having your legs sawed off hurts like hell.
 
I was just waiting for another opportunity to say this:

It's all Bush's fault!




That felt good! :2razz:
 
What a shock! If you teach teens how to have sex, teen pregnancy is going to rise. If you tell them that having sex isn't the problem, pregnancies are going increase. :rofl
 
Education is the best way. Teach these kids simple economics and how children eat capital and how this loss of capital effects their own life and they'll be petrified of it. My mother had five kids that she couldn't afford to raise and her life was hell. That alone makes me afraid of even having one kid. Simply telling them not to screw will only make them want to bite that mysterious apple even more.
 
Richard Nixon said:
Education is the best way. Teach these kids simple economics and how children eat capital and how this loss of capital effects their own life and they'll be petrified of it. My mother had five kids that she couldn't afford to raise and her life was hell. That alone makes me afraid of even having one kid. Simply telling them not to screw will only make them want to bite that mysterious apple even more.
Click to expand...

Slow down teen pregnancies by teaching money management to teenagers? Good luck with that.
 
Well I didn't get any of them pregnant so its not my problem.
 
apdst said:
What a shock! If you teach teens how to have sex, teen pregnancy is going to rise. If you tell them that having sex isn't the problem, pregnancies are going increase. :rofl
Click to expand...

Reading is great, you should try it sometime:

Although the CDC does not attribute a cause, groups that support comprehensive sex education have seized on the report as evidence of the failure of religiously-driven policies that shy away from teaching about contraception in favour of emphasising avoiding sexual contact.
Click to expand...

Where does the CDC state the cause?

This is correlation only.

99% of people who die had a meal within the last 24 houres. ZMOG MEALS KILL!!!

Liberals are so ****ing stupid.
 
And energy management. You tell a kid the energy and finances involved in raising a kid and they won't want one if you teach them properly. It's the same principle that's employed when teaching people not to break the law; educated people amount to a very small amount of people in prisons.
 
WI Crippler said:
Well I didn't get any of them pregnant so its not my problem.
Click to expand...

You're paying for their food stamps/Title19/Housing assistance/Employment assistance/juvenile crime....it's your business.
 
Good Lord. Is there nothing people won't blame on Bush? :roll:

Let's just take a look at the sexualization of young girls in the last 10 years. Something that had nothing to do with George Bush, BTW. Just off the top of my head, as a mother, these things have been a concern to me:

1) Clothing giants like Abercrombie & Fitch marketting sexuality more than clothing. This clothier as well as many others martketting thong panties to girls as young as 7 & 8

2) Disgusting t shirts and jeans targetted at young girls with messages like "juicy" splayed across the buttocks of a 10 year old. If you have a pr-pubescent girl, just try to find clothes for her that don't make her look like a slut.

3) Videos that are nothing short of soft core porn.

4) Even kids shows have sexuality snuck in. iCarly, which is a show targetted for tweens and younger have a young Carly wearing push up bras in order to get the attention of the boy her BFF also likes.

5) Zoe 101. Britney Spears lil sis gracing the cover of magazine after magazine glorifying her teen preganancy. Little girls (and boys for that matter) know exactly who this kid is and look up to her. Before anyone jumps in with Bristol Palin, she is not a tween star on a tween network. She's also a but older than this spears kid, and her pregancy was never glorified in the press.

6) Drake & Josh - another kids show targetted for pre-teens (if a teen watches that show, they are probably dorks) which praises one kid for always "making out" with all the girls in school while blowing off school work. The teachers fall in love with him and give him good grades. That's contrasted by his geeky step brother who works hard, studies hard and is awkward with the girls. He never gets a break. What's the message there?

Honestly, kids are bombarded with this garbage at a very early age. It's silly to blame GWB. If anything, he may have helped some kids decide they didn't need to be like what's being shoved down their throats as cool.
 
Jerry said:
Reading is great, you should try it sometime:



Where does the CDC state the cause?

This is correlation only.

99% of people who die had a meal within the last 24 houres. ZMOG MEALS KILL!!!

Liberals are so ****ing stupid.
Click to expand...

I do read. I've read that condoms are only 86% effective at stopping pregnancy. More teens start prokin', more teens are going to get pregnant. It's a statistical inevidibility.
 
StandUpChuck said:
Good Lord. Is there nothing people won't blame on Bush? :roll:

Let's just take a look at the sexualization of young girls in the last 10 years. Something that had nothing to do with George Bush, BTW. Just off the top of my head, as a mother, these things have been a concern to me:

1) Clothing giants like Abercrombie & Fitch marketting sexuality more than clothing. This clothier as well as many others martketting thong panties to girls as young as 7 & 8

2) Disgusting t shirts and jeans targetted at young girls with messages like "juicy" splayed across the buttocks of a 10 year old. If you have a pr-pubescent girl, just try to find clothes for her that don't make her look like a slut.

3) Videos that are nothing short of soft core porn.

4) Even kids shows have sexuality snuck in. iCarly, which is a show targetted for tweens and younger have a young Carly wearing push up bras in order to get the attention of the boy her BFF also likes.

5) Zoe 101. Britney Spears lil sis gracing the cover of magazine after magazine glorifying her teen preganancy. Little girls (and boys for that matter) know exactly who this kid is and look up to her. Before anyone jumps in with Bristol Palin, she is not a tween star on a tween network. She's also a but older than this spears kid, and her pregancy was never glorified in the press.

6) Drake & Josh - another kids show targetted for pre-teens (if a teen watches that show, they are probably dorks) which praises one kid for always "making out" with all the girls in school while blowing off school work. The teachers fall in love with him and give him good grades. That's contrasted by his geeky step brother who works hard, studies hard and is awkward with the girls. He never gets a break. What's the message there?

Honestly, kids are bombarded with this garbage at a very early age. It's silly to blame GWB. If anything, he may have helped some kids decide they didn't need to be like what's being shoved down their throats as cool.
Click to expand...

I think you make some good point here, Chuck, but I don't believe it to be the whole story. There's no doubt that advertising/TV/movies/etc, have been "sexified" but it has been happening for a while now. And while it was happening, teen pregnancy declined. So to me, there's more to the story.

And this is not a bash Bush thread... it is based-on facts. And the fact is, teen pregnancy sharply went up during his tenure.
 
apdst said:
I do read. I've read that condoms are only 86% effective at stopping pregnancy. More teens start prokin', more teens are going to get pregnant. It's a statistical inevidibility.
Click to expand...

Wow that has nothing to do with the OP or the thread.

If you can't show that Bush's policies caused more teens to become pregnant, then you have nothing.
 
Middleground said:
And this is not a bash Bush thread... it is based-on facts. And the fact is, teen pregnancy sharply went up during his tenure.
Click to expand...

But not because of Bush ;)

He just happened to be in office. Coincidence only.
 
Jerry said:
Wow that has nothing to do with the OP or the thread.

If you can't show that Bush's policies caused more teens to become pregnant, then you have nothing.
Click to expand...

Where did I say that Bush's policies caused more teen pregnancies?
 
Middleground said:
I think you make some good point here, Chuck, but I don't believe it to be the whole story. There's no doubt that advertising/TV/movies/etc, have been "sexified" but it has been happening for a while now. And while it was happening, teen pregnancy declined. So to me, there's more to the story.

And this is not a bash Bush thread... it is based-on facts. And the fact is, teen pregnancy sharply went up during his tenure.
Click to expand...

There's nothing to say Bush influenced that. Those tv shows got much worse in the last 10 years, as did the slutty clothing. I almost forgot about the internet. Nude pics within 1 click. Chat rooms where kids brag about sexual trysts. Cell phones where young kids send nude pics (oft times to people they met in chatrooms). The decline of the traditonal American family where 1 parent is home after school to make sure the kids aren't sucking each other off in the basement. Bush had nothing to do with these things, and if he had ever stepped in, the outcry of censorship, morality imposing & other feigned outrages would be heard from east to west.

It's not our president. It's our culture. Off on a tanget here. I'm so sick of people saying Americans are uptight about sex. Our culture is nothing BUT sex. I was reading a gardening site last night, and a pair of t*ts were staring me in the face. :shock:
 
Middleground said:
And this is not a bash Bush thread... it is based-on facts. And the fact is, teen pregnancy sharply went up during his tenure.
Click to expand...
Three words:
Causation v correlation
 
I'd say this is more evidence of the dangers and ignorance of abstinence only education. The only correlation to Bush that I can see is that he did advocate and push for funding of abstinence only education.
 
Dr_Patrick said:
I'd say this is more evidence of the dangers and ignorance of abstinence only education. The only correlation to Bush that I can see is that he did advocate and push for funding of abstinence only education.
Click to expand...

Were his policies even in force?

One pro-abstinence-only person in the article was complaining that the Bush policy was barely present at all.
 
Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among a generation of American school girls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage under George Bush's evangelically-driven education policy, according to a new report by the US's major public health body.
Click to expand...

It's all well and good to tell teenagers to ideally wait until marriage but it will never be as safe or effective as information and education.
I am a strong supporter of sex education being taught from a young age and more frequently focusing on the consequences and alternatives
 
Jerry said:
Were his policies even in force?

One pro-abstinence-only person in the article was complaining that the Bush policy was barely present at all.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying that they were in force or even that he's responsible, I'm only saying that his urging that more funding be put into abstinence only education is the only correlation I could see to Bush.
 
StandUpChuck said:
There's nothing to say Bush influenced that. Those tv shows got much worse in the last 10 years, as did the slutty clothing. I almost forgot about the internet. Nude pics within 1 click. Chat rooms where kids brag about sexual trysts. Cell phones where young kids send nude pics (oft times to people they met in chatrooms). The decline of the traditonal American family where 1 parent is home after school to make sure the kids aren't sucking each other off in the basement. Bush had nothing to do with these things, and if he had ever stepped in, the outcry of censorship, morality imposing & other feigned outrages would be heard from east to west.
Click to expand...

Agreed this could play a part. But it has been happening for a long time. BUT the trend was going down, and now it's gone up sharply.

It's not our president. It's our culture. Off on a tanget here. I'm so sick of people saying Americans are uptight about sex. Our culture is nothing BUT sex. I was reading a gardening site last night, and a pair of t*ts were staring me in the face. :shock:
Click to expand...

Whay are you so certain it was not Bush's policies of absitnence??? :confused: How can you be that positive?

And I have to disagree with you, Chuck. Americans are more uptight, and I believe it's one of the reason kids look for nudity and suck each other off in basements.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom