Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Giving Teen Girls a Plan B

November 29, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK)

There’s no culture war like the contraception war. And whether you’re a Catholic churchgoer, a Planned Parenthood donor, a House Republican, or a Code Pink activist, there are few better ways to spoil holidays with the in-laws than to bring up birth control at the dinner table. It was considerate of the American Academy of Pediatrics, then, to wait until after the Thanksgiving weekend to release a policy brief recommending that physicians pre-prescribe emergency contraception—known as Plan B or Next Choice—to teenage patients, in order to ensure their ability to obtain it when ... Read More

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Staunching Aggression From the Womb

March 4, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Crime and delinquency have roots in the womb, and so the risks can and should be addressed early on, even before a child is born, a University of Pennsylvania researcher says. According to a large body of research, the early risk factors that may predispose a child to violence include teen pregnancy, birth complications, lead exposure, head injury, child abuse, and maternal stress and depression. Jianghong Liu, an assistant professor at Penn’s School of Nursing and School of Medicine, argues that these factors, whether biological, psychological or environmental, can interact with each ... Read More

More like this: Findings, Health, NEWS
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The Upside of Teen Pregnancy

January 13, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Jenelle is a party-loving high school junior in Oak Island, N.C., with blond hair and a metal stud above one side of her mouth. Andrew is a slim, smooth-talking former model with a fondness for alcohol. They've been together three years. Jenelle thought unprotected sex with Andrew would be OK because they'd tried it before and nothing had happened. Now they've got a baby on the way, and Jenelle's determined to keep it and stay with Andrew, too. "We're in it forever now," she predicts. For the stars of the first episode of the recently completed second season of MTV's reality show, "16 ... Read More

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AARP, Meet STD

August 26, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment

The acronyms AARP and HIV seldom appear in the same sentence. But the assumption that AIDS is a disease of the young — a misconception shared by many physicians — has helped lead to an increase in the number of Americans 50 and older who are infected with the virus (see "The Over-50 Crowd Relearns the Facts of Life"). New figures from the Georgia Division of Public Health suggest the need for better health education to inform sexually active older people that they, too, are at risk. According to a troubling trend line released by the agency in June, the number of newly diagnosed ... Read More

More like this: Health, Offline Diary, September 2008
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Pregnant with Possibility

July 17, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment

In a recent op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times and on his own online site, YouthFacts.org, contrarian sociologist Mike Males takes the media to task for their unquestioning embrace of the Gloucester (Massachusetts) High School pregnancy pact story, which — after having been disseminated around the world and dissected for its greater sociological meaning — has now been mostly discredited. Males is the author of such books as The Scapegoat Generation: America's War on Adolescents and Framing Youth: Ten Myths About the Next Generation, in which he defends young people against what he ... Read More

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The Lessons of Gloucester, or It’s About Gender, Stupid

June 21, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment

Gloucester, Mass., which proudly calls itself one of the nation's "Preserve America Communities," made headlines this week. Seventeen girls at the local high school are pregnant, many of them by what can only be called "unintelligent design." According to Gloucester High Principal Joseph Sullivan, a group of sophomore girls at the school formed a "pregnancy pact," committing themselves to get pregnant and raise their babies together. The experts are rushing in to explain this phenomenon. Explanation No. 1: Sex education at the school is inadequate, ending after freshman year. Young ... Read More

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