Re: Teenage pregnancy myth dismissed
BBC News Monday, 22 January 2007
Is it this newspaper article or the study itself, of this complex subject, that seems so dismissive of the way things are for women today, whether young or older. Surely this is only part of the problem, that teenage girls are becoming pregnant. What about the ones with unwanted pregnancies, or wanted ones, who decide not to terminate but go on to have the baby. And then, of course, did these researchers look at marital status. I'm not suggesting that all women need to have a husband in order to start a family (in today's world it is a choice that well-established women are free to make), but there may well be a difference in how an unwanted pregnancy develops, between single girls and married ones, as well as differences in ways of working through the problem. It's not all a question of getting "carried away in the moment," as Toni Belfield, of the sexual health charity FPA was reported as saying. I recall a book by Carol Gilligan, with the title In a Different Voice (1982) in which she discusses a study of college girls who become pregnant and are facing the dilemma of whether or not to have an abortion. The book may be a bit outdated for today's world. But making the problem of teen pregnancy into a clearcut issue, whereby wanted babies are carried full term while unwanted ones are aborted, seems dismissive of the process of decision-making that pregnant women must be having to go through, not to mention consideration of their socioeconomic circumstances.
Teenage pregnancy myth dismissed
BBC News
Jan 22, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6279601.stm
Link checked Apr 18, 2012
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