Ah, I see what you are saying. It is true that in the general swing of things the dude gets of scot-free (ala Juno) and the girl is the one stuck with the pregnancy, the publicity of everyone knowing what she's been doing, and the ultimate responsibility for deciding what happens before and after the birth of the child.
While I agree that men should be held responsible for their actions to the same degree as women, the few cases of teen pregnancies that I know about personally (I do come from a small town, after all) the guy was not father material. If we're talking about what's best for the child, sometimes not having the father in the picture is better than having him there. To be fair, the same can also be said of some mothers.
You are right that not everyone has sex prior to marriage. But the cultural, social and biological pressure is enormous, and not everyone has the capacity to fight it. Furthermore, not everyone has the desire to.
As for abstinence-only education, one of the things that I find most lacking is that they don't generally describe strategies for how to remain abstinent. They don't talk about what do you do when you're in love with someone and you have a desire to be intimate, but you know that sex isn't right for you. What are the kinds of things you and your partner can to do together that will leave you both happy and feeling close and loving that does not violate your belief in abstaining from sex? These sort of details I think are really important. You can't just tell people to "say no" you have to tell them *how* to say no. How many people have sex for the first time because their boyfriend/girlfriend says he/she will dump them if they don't? My first boyfriend said he would kill himself if I didn't. That's some serious pressure.
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While I agree that men should be held responsible for their actions to the same degree as women, the few cases of teen pregnancies that I know about personally (I do come from a small town, after all) the guy was not father material. If we're talking about what's best for the child, sometimes not having the father in the picture is better than having him there. To be fair, the same can also be said of some mothers.
You are right that not everyone has sex prior to marriage. But the cultural, social and biological pressure is enormous, and not everyone has the capacity to fight it. Furthermore, not everyone has the desire to.
As for abstinence-only education, one of the things that I find most lacking is that they don't generally describe strategies for how to remain abstinent. They don't talk about what do you do when you're in love with someone and you have a desire to be intimate, but you know that sex isn't right for you. What are the kinds of things you and your partner can to do together that will leave you both happy and feeling close and loving that does not violate your belief in abstaining from sex? These sort of details I think are really important. You can't just tell people to "say no" you have to tell them *how* to say no. How many people have sex for the first time because their boyfriend/girlfriend says he/she will dump them if they don't? My first boyfriend said he would kill himself if I didn't. That's some serious pressure.