All Fun & Games Til Someone Gets Syphilis

The Guttmacher Institute has a report on a new study of contraceptive usage among various age groups of women. And guess what?! Turns out that whole abstinence only education that wasn't preventing teen pregnancies is now also helping spread sexual transmitted diseases like Syphilis.

After declines in teen pregnancy in the 90's and early 2000's - knocked up rates went up.

According to the report:

"Sexually active 15-19-year-olds are more likely than their 20-49-year-old counterparts to use contraceptives inconsistently and, on average, experience a 25% higher rate of contraceptive failure."

Last week Forbes had a similar piece with disturbing data

"About one-third of adolescents hadn't received instruction on methods of birth control before age 18. In 2004, there were about 745,000 pregnancies among females younger than age 20. This included an estimated 16,000 pregnancies among girls aged 10 to 14."

And if that isn't unfortunate enough syphilis cases in 15 to 24 year old males and females have increased in the last few years. And about a million young people 10-24 have it or chlamydia or gonorrhea.

• "Nearly one-quarter of females aged 15 to 19, and 45 percent of females aged 20 to 24 had a human papillomavirus (HPV) infection during 2003-2004.
• From 1997 to 2006, rates of AIDS cases among males among males aged 15 to 24 increased.
• In 2006, the majority of new diagnoses of HIV infection among young people occurred among males and those aged 20 to 24.
• From 2004 to 2006, about 100,000 females aged 10 to 24 visited a hospital emergency department for nonfatal sexual assault, including 30,000 females aged 10 to 14."

I think its obvious that whatever policy that happened in the 90's influenced the decrease in teen pregnancies and rate of STDs and obviously one could deduce that the thing that changed in say... 2000 was probably a contributing factor to a sudden increase....?

Access to proper information is key and education is the silver bullet to stopping STDs and unwanted pregnancy. For the slew of organizations out there that think telling kids "just say no" is a great model, I think its obviously not working.