May: Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month

I gave you 3 other events that are celebrated in May, and Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month is another. It deserves its own post, and I think goes hand in hand with Masturbation Month. There is even a Latino Initiative with a list of resources.


The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy always has free items for organizations and communities who want to spread the word on the issue (like the banners I found for this site). Here are a few highlights from their website:

If you are a parent, mentor, adult in a young person's life, they also have a Quiz you can take together, or that the young person in your life can take on their own. They offer scenarios for each question and the young people get to choose which way they would respond.

Watch the documentary Too Young which follows young mothers of different races and ethnicity discuss their experiences being a young parent, conversations with their parents that did/not help, and challenges they encounter. You also hear from a young father and the struggles he has with providing for his child.



Look at the Numbers:

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy's DCR Report (Data, Charts, Research), states that:

More than two-thirds of all pregnancies to African American women are unplanned (69%).

More than half of all pregnancies to Latina women are unplanned (54%).

Four in ten pregnancies to non-Hispanic white women are unplanned (40%).

SIDEBAR: "Latina women" is a double positive, and therefore grammatically incorrect. If you are saying LatinA you are already saying woman, it's a gendered term. If you say "Latino women" well then it's ok, but why when you can say "Latina"? This is an error many organizations make, so if you are attempting to reach us and our young Latinas, get the terminology together first. Also, what's the deal with using "Latina women" and then "non-Hispanic" terminology? Consistency would be nice, but I'd prefer "non-Latino" to replace "non-Hispanic" personally.


The Guttmacher Institute, which I have mentioned before, reports on pregnancy rates, birth rates, and abortion rates:

In 2002 (when the most recent data is available) 84% of Latinas who became pregnant gave birth.

In Puerto Rico alone, 60% of teens gave birth.

Of pregnant Latinas, 28.5% terminated their pregnancy

Not in their data, but I did find a CDC round up that shows Native youth have a birth rate of 55% and among Asian American youth the birth rate is 17%. All rates are for youth living in the US.

This is important data, because there is a lot of stereotypes about Latinas and their ideas and practices surrounding the option of abortion. This data challenges those stereotypes and shows that we are more complicated than they thought we were!

If you are looking for more information on the reproductive health of Native youth keep a look out for Native Youth Sexual Health it's coming soon!

Lessons of Hate

Today I had a guest speaker from SIECUS, my homeboy Max, visit my class and students. He shared with us the work he does at SIECUS and showed this film to my class:


Lessons of Hate in the Bible Belt from Stuart Productions on Vimeo.


Have you heard of this issue? Debra Taylor has not been reinstated. One of the things you may notice from watching the video is that the students in the class are from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds. Max shared with us that when he spoke with Debra Taylor, she shared that a majority of the youth at the school are Latino, Native, and Black with a sprinkle of White students. Some of the fears among the students in the class who heard the superintendent say he "hated queers" were Latino and some are not documented and do not feel comfortable talking out against someone of his authority and power. I definitely understand that! I can't recall being a very vocal young person to such people in power at my school either.

If our youth have teachers who want to teach respect for all people, but school authorities are pulling the cord on such efforts, if organizations like GLSEN exist, but schools enforce web monitors that filter out sites that have certain words such as "gay," "lesbian," and "bisexual" so students cannot access these spaces, I can't help but wonder if our schools are perpetuating the death of our youth. Many have argued that schools are breeding grounds for incarceration, they can also be breeding grounds for murder, and with abstinence-only programming, as former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, MD states, a breeding ground for child abuse.