Please excuse the following rant

If you're at all like me, you've been watching Lifetime, when nothing better is on tv, and have heard about the movie The Pregnancy Pact. I was intrigued by the commercials, so last night I settled in to watch a movie about teenage pregnancy. Quickly, I was drawn into the story about a high school with 18 pregnant teens. However, the ignorant parents of these teens infuriated me beyond all reason. They refused to talk to their kids about how to prevent pregnancy if they chose to have sex, and they shamed their kids into being to scared to purchase condoms. As unfortunate as it is, kids younger and younger are becoming sexually active and they are not taking the steps needed to protect themselves. I've written two different papers on this subject that have led me to the same conclusion: kids need sexual education where they are taught about how to prevent pregnancy and STD's. Through writing these papers I've found some very disturbing facts: kids are more likely to become pregnant or contract an STD if they are given abstinence only sex ed, and the average age for kids starting to engage in oral sex is 12! Unless we start getting some better education out there for kids we're going to have an entire generation of kids who are either pregnant or have STDs. Something absolutely has to be done or else kids are going to keep completely changing the course of their lives for one night of fun, and in my opinion that's a tragedy.