The dirty, dirty south

The U.S. has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the world, even though our teenagers are not really any more sexually active than those in other countries. What's more, in the Bible Belt, the pregnancy rates AND STD rates are highest of them all. Alabama. Mississippi. Kentucky. Arkansas. Texas. South Carolina.
If these kids are so godly, then why are they having sex? Because they're teenagers. Duh. Teenagers live to fuck.
But cultural and religious shame prevents them from taking precautions.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the actual sex education program I was given in high school health class. No other sex ed was available to us. What's more, if we were found with "inappropriate paraphernalia" on campus, it could be confiscated. This included any form of birth control. I actually witnessed one guy's truck searched and his condoms taken away one week during homecoming. That's right... while students in blue states were being handed birth control in high school and health departments, ours had theirs taken away. I still saw girls covertly taking the Pill with their lunch (of course, every single one of them maintained that it was for some reason other than to not get pregnant).
Why is abstinence-based sexual education dangerous? I'm sure you can think of your own reasons, but here are a few:

• To teach kids that they should wait until marriage implies that there is some "magic moment" when you are ready to have sex. Some 17-year-old friends got married solely for that reason. Which is worse-- to begin a lifetime commitment you don't have the emotional maturity to handle, or to just go ahead and have premarital sex?
• If sex after marriage is okay, what of third world child brides? Because they are committed to their husbands for life, is it more acceptable for these 12- and 13-year-old girls to be having sex than a far more worldly 22-year-old college student in a different country? Marriage does not imply readiness.
• Current scientific studies are looking deeper into research that has shown that men who wait until they are married (e.g., in their twenties or later) to have sex are more likely to experience impotence.
  
• Not to mention that new studies have shown that delinquency and teen sex not only do not have a positive correlation, but actually might have a negative one.
  
  So in conclusion, please just tell them to use condoms already.