Right now your biggest concerns could be how to impress your friends and at school, homework, what your favorite singer wore to the Grammys, whatever team you’re involved in, and who’s asking you to prom. Maybe you’re taking your PSATs and checking out colleges, but even the most driven of girls probably have boys on their minds. What do you do when you’re young and just trying to have a fun teenage girl life? It’s easy to get carried away with young love and forget that sex is more than fun, but it’s nature’s way of getting you to make babies. According to 10 Teen Pregnancy Facts from About.com, %82 of teen pregnancies were unplanned. Those girls were probably just trying to “live while they’re young”, but failed to take measures against the consequences. It’s not a big secret how pregnancies happen. Mariah Powell,once a teen mother herself, warns, “…You’re experiencing a rush of biological and emotional reactions, you need to prevent pregnancy before it gets too hot. Sex is awesome and beautiful. So is fire. Both must be respected and handled with care or you’re going to have an accident.”
Mariah was a very bouncy girl in high school. She was always energetic and skipping around, very bubbly. She was always smiling and enjoyed my stupid jokes. We only lived a few miles from each other out in the country and she would pretend to miss the bus so that I would have to drive her home. We spent so much time together, and we were teenagers. It was romance. Then in June of 2007 she found out she was pregnant and we were going to have a baby together. We were pushed into an engagement and my parents pressured me harder to do better at school and work harder to take over their business, so I didn’t get to be around Mariah except for once or twice a week after she dropped out of high school to go to community college. Finally I got to ask her some very meaningful questions about that life changing period of her life and I want to share it with you because teen pregnancy is tough and you need to understand how important it is to make the right decisions when you’re young, even though it’s hard.
Mariah shared with me how she felt the first moment she knew we were expecting:
“At first, I didn’t believe it. When I went to the clinic, the young lady there was very vague about how to use the pregnancy test…” She describes how the volunteer brought her to a room in the back and started talking to her. “I really don’t remember much because I was so nervous, I just wanted to know what the results were first before anything else. She finally looked down at the test and said, “Ok so this looks positive, so…” and she kept rambling on, just like that! She spoke so quickly but I was still trying to remember what she said. Positive? Wait, I’m pregnant? Whoa, back up! Are you sure? So the first moment I definitely felt disbelief, bewilderment, I really felt like I had been placed in an alternate dimension because my reality was effectively reconfigured.”
Being told you’re pregnant isn’t easy. Mariah felt like her world was turned upside down. She had some serious things to think about when faced with pregnancy. What do you do?
“I knew I had to tell you because as the father I felt like you should have some input and maybe have an idea about what to do. I had no idea how I was going to tell my parents, though. I never like the idea of abortion, so it didn’t cross my mind to terminate the pregnancy but I was still grappling with reality. I wasn’t convinced that I was pregnant. I mean, all the rational proof was there, it just wasn’t registering and I couldn’t see myself as a mother or as a person entirely responsible for the life of a vulnerable little person.”
Pregnancy is hard to grasp mentally. Coming to grips with the condition is one thing, but it will not wait for your permission go on ahead. There are generally three options a young pregnant girl can make: becoming a mom, getting an abortion,and giving up the child for adoption. 10 Teen Pregnancy Fact states that %57 of teen pregnancies end in live birth, and another 14% end in miscarriage. Granted that you don’t lose the baby, you need to calmly figure out what is the best decision for yourself and the child. “I think abortion has its place in the most unfortunate and dire situations, but that it shouldn’t be so lax. That being said, I’ve always respected life. It’s such a miracle to me[….]So abortion was never considered. Adoption, I maybe should have thought about more,” she goes on to say that adoption should have been considered just as much as abstinence for the best, and “These may have been smarter decisions. But I was in love, and I felt like I could handle becoming a Mommy with grace. Apply thoughts on destiny and fate here, I can’t imagine life any other way now that I’m Alex’s Mom and we’re a family. I’m very proud of all of us. It was indescribably hard, though”.
Do you want to have to make this decision? Do you want to have to decide how to handle a baby? The best solution, as always, is prevention. To keep your decisions simple, like whether you should do your homework before or after volleyball practice, you should stay informed to avoid pregnancy. So what happens that raises chances a girl will become pregnant, besides the obvious? “I think what led to my pregnancy besides the obvious was that I didn’t have an honest ground upon which to discuss it with adults I trusted and sex education wasn’t very realistic at our school,” reflects Mariah, “I was originally sold on the whole Abstinence idea… before my hormones kicked in and before I got mixed up with sly young David Powell! […] I wanted to talk to my parents about it, they lied and said they waited until they were married. I never got the sex talk, really. It was just the school abstinence program which spouted, “DON’T DO IT! You WILL get an STD! Or Pregnant! Or broken hearted! Or a combination of any of those!”. I was smart enough to request birth control at my first OBGYN appointment, because that’s when we started dating.I told the doctor it was because I wanted lighter periods, because mine were pretty heavy. And my Mom was cool with that justification. I didn’t HAVE to lie, of course but I felt like there would be major consequences if I actually opened up, told the truth, and sought real solutions to my early sexuality.”
We were living in Northern New Mexico, the 4th state from the top of a list for most teen pregnancies in the early 2000′s, only 7 years before Mariah got pregnant (Top 10 States with Highest Teenage Birth Rates, About.com). Mariah comments, “I’m not surprised. Our area of New Mexico was a small town with not a lot of things for stupid teenagers to be busy with. On top of that, the area is pretty conservative. Most the industry around there is all oil and gas and farming. I’m not saying there’s anything at all wrong with any of that, but the conservative view on teenagers and sex seems to be pretty authoritarian “just say no and don’t ask questions” and teenagers are wild and somewhat rebellious by nature. Add in a little boredom and a lot of hormones plus lack of proper realistic sex education and you get lots of teen pregnancies.”
If lack of realistic sex education is to blame for thousands of teen pregnancies a year, then you may think you are not responsible for unplanned pregnancies. Wrong. If your education system will not help you avoid getting pregnant when you’re 16, you need to take care of yourself. “Be strong. In a situation where no one will be open and realistic to you about sex and pregnancy, you must fend for yourself. You MUST seek out the information and proactively defend your potential to become whatever you want to be by making the right decisions NOW.”
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