The Pregnancy Epidemic
By Emily, age 21, Newfoundland
Sweet Designs Featured Writer
I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but does it seem like unplanned teenage pregnancies are all the rage these days? I'm starting to feel a little left out here.
I come from a conservative Muslim background that usually demands that I would have already dropped out of school, gotten married, and at least become pregnant with my first child by the age of 21. But it seems that, as of late, the girls who come from the same background as me are the only ones not having babies these days.
The old high school that I went to are full of them. Young girls who got pregnant either while drunk or who just didn't bother using birth control. But it made me wonder...why is it that girls in high school are so eager to have children, while we criticize the generations before us for doing the same thing?
Personally, I've decided to wait until I'm at least 30 to have a child, if I have any at all. The reason is because not only am I in the middle of bettering myself with an education, but I'm also too selfish to take care of another human being. I also like my personal space which you don't get much of while you're housing a person in your womb for nine whole months. I just don't find it logically or financially feasible to be having children at this age, which brings me to another question: Why do smart, independent girls my age keep the babies? This is the age of technology. We have options.
I've heard some rumours in my school about girls having babies to trap their boyfriends into staying with them, which, in my opinion, is not smart either. Because if he wants to leave, chances are, he's going to leave. Or he's going to be a deadbeat dad. Other girls simply don't believe in abortion or live in an isolated community where abortion clinics are non-existent. And many girls say that they don't want their child to be in the hands of strangers for the rest of its life.
So what about prevention? Did anyone have that bright idea? While I realize that birth control, whether hormone or contraceptive, doesn't work the way it's supposed to for everyone, I just feel like there are too many ways to prevent a pregnancy in this day and age. Every time I have sex, I'm always very careful to put on a condom and always make sure that my birth control is "in" because I don't want babies.
But because of the way karma works, I will probably find out that I have become pregnant about one week after this article posts. And while I hope that doesn't happen, I also hope that the girls reading this article won't find out they're pregnant either.
