Relying on a message of abstinence to stop hormone-charged teens from having sex doesn’t always work.
That’s the word from a new group trying to convince teens to use contraception if they are going to have sex.
The new organization is called “Treble-Up” because officials are urging randy teenagers to make sure they can avoid pregnancy by using three different contraception methods at the same time if they are going to have sex.
“The U.S. has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the developed world, with New Mexico leading the 50 states, followed by Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana,” according to officials.
“Texas is tied with Oklahoma for fifth highest teen pregnancy rates, but is first for repeat teen pregnancies and third for HIV rates. It’s not surprising, given that 25 percent of Texas school districts don’t even teach sex-education and almost 60 percent teach abstinence-only.”
While “Treble-Up” focuses mainly on southern states and especially Texas, California has had a better record that a lot of the states cited by the organization.
California comes in at about the mid-point in teen pregnancy rates, and teen pregnancy has dropped by 74 percent between 1991 and 2014, according to a number of studies.
“Abstinence is a good message, but by itself is not enough,” Treble-Up said in a statement.
“For example, abstinence isn’t effective against rape, nor is it 100 percent effective against STDs, some of which can be transferred by skin-to-skin contact, shared needles, and non-intercourse forms of sexual contact.
“Babies can even be born with STDs. Even couples that do abstain until marriage still need to know how to plan their families and how to avoid disease.”
According to the new group, it was formed “to start a discussion of educational policy in Texas. Research shows that teen pregnancies are the lowest in states with comprehensive sex education, and highest in those states with abstinence-only education.
“Maybe it’s time to talk about ‘abstinence-plus’ education in Texas.”
Treble-Up said it has launched a website at www.treble-up.com providing a free book on contraception.
“This book on ‘Marital Education’ tackles the teen pregnancy and high disease rates head-on. It provides an easy-to-read summary of each type of modern pregnancy and disease prevention method, including fertility awareness based methods, barrier methods, hormonal methods, IUDs, and the new long acting reversible contraceptives, known as ‘LARCs.’. It discusses the most common reasons for failure of each type of birth control, and provides detailed instructions for use and for reducing the failure rate. Using two or even three types of birth control at the same time provides overlapping protection and can improve the users odds of success.”