Birth Control Is Our Decision

Each year hundreds of young females from the ages 14 to 16 become pregnant. Specialist have debated whether these young girls should have access to birth control and other contraceptive products. Although, many people disagree with the idea of teenagers having birth control, because the thought of it promoting more sexual activity, many more others agree and accept the idea. This is an important issue because year after year girls get pregnant especially in high school and it can most likely ruin their young lives.

A girl is going to become sexually active one day or another, everyone is different, and they will make mistakes it’s a part of life. Teenage girls are not able to get birth control without their parents’ permission and if the parent does not agree with getting them on the pill that gives them a higher chance of getting pregnant if they decide to have sex. The question is should birth control be available to teens if parents do not approve? My answer is yes it should.

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At the end it is our body, something no one can ever control. I know that parents want to prevent things like this from ever happening to their child especially their daughter, but it is something bound to happen. In an article I read, “about 230,000 babies were born to women aged 15 to 19 in 2015” (Familydoctor, 2018). Since then rate have gone down but numbers are still high and there are ways to prevent teen pregnancy and one way is by birth control.

Of course, some might say to not have sex or use a condom, but people make mistakes or life happens. I know why this is a difficult decision for both the parents and daughter, many might find it uncomfortable with the idea of their child being able to receive this contraceptive product. They might not know if their child is having sexual intercourse especially if they do not have a good relationship with them where there is a lack of communication. Being able to receive birth control might just add to their concern. It can also be because of personal experiences of their own, the parent might just want to protect their child from coming in contact with anything that might mean being sexually active.

A theory I would see this controversy topic taking is a symbolic interaction approach. This theory was created by George Herbert Mead, people are motivated to act based on the meanings they assign to people, things, and events. These meanings are created in the language that people use both in communicating with others and in self-talk, or their own private thought. This is something particularly important especially for a teen who is curious and wanting to know more about like. Sex being usually one the most thought of things in a teenager’s mind. It is important for parents to be able to let their children make their own decisions at times, it teaches the teen a little more about themselves. Qualities of Symbolic Interaction are relationship between symbols and actions, involves interdependency. Actions involve decision makings. In the Introduction to Sociology textbook in one of the chapters it talked about how one decision can affect someone life’s (Vyain, 2012). This is something parents should think about. Not just do many disagree with this birth control idea but many agree as well.

I used the GSS Data Explorer for my source of data that details throughout the years of people response to this question. It starts from 1985 and ends in 2018. This is a good website because it has the years and the percentage of population labeled, it is an incredibly detailed graph. One is able to see the percentage of people who agreed and disagreed with this question if birth control should be available to ten if parents do not approve. It also breaks it down by race, age, citizenship status and religion rom the people who vote.

In the first year 1985 entering the others you can see the graph increasing entering a semi steady pace. It continues either to increase by a little of decrease by a little. Between 2000 and 2005 It decrease around 10 percent but gradually started to grow again. It shows the amount of people agreeing each year and shows the controversy this question emerges since there is a lot of increasing and decreasing going on in the graph. To look more into this question and what people really think, I will choose 3 breakdowns sex, race, and subjective class identical to expand the information given.

The first breakdown I chose was sex. Here you can see the female is the orange line and the males are the gray line. The orange line is more than the gray. This can be so because this is a topic mainly towards women so more women would agree and vote than men. Although there is a lot of male agreements. There was one point in 2004 that male surpass the female by 3 percent. Around 21 percent of female voted and agree on the question and 24 percent of male agreed. After the orange line increased surpassing the gray line for the next 14 years.

The second breakdown was race. White is the gray line, black is the orange line, and other is the black line. All of these different races seem to agree differently throughout the years. There is a lot of increasing and decreasing, each one having one year or multiple years when they surpass the other lines. The only line that has not dramatically increase or decrease was the gray line which is for white. It’s also lower than black and others. It only surpasses them in 2018 by 3 percent. This all depends on the race and here beliefs.

The last breakdown was subjective class identification. It is broken down by the classes in four lines. The lower class is orange, the working class is dark orange, the middle class is red, and the upper class is dark red. Like the race breakdown, this one also has a lot of increasing and decreasing that goes on throughout the year with all the classes except for middle class. The upper class seems to have a lot of increases and is closes to 50 percent than the rest. The first year 1985 the lower class had 17 percent agree, the working class had 22 percent agree, the middle class had 23 percent agree, and the upper class has 31 percent agree. Towards the last year this survey question was taken in 2018 The lower and working class had 31 percent, the middle class had 27 percent and the upper class only had 24 percent agree.

Each of these breakdowns show detailed numbers of those that agree and how their mind might change throughout the year on this controversy topic. It shows that teens should be allowed to make their own decision when it comes to birth control because parents cannot always protect their children from doing things that can be out of there control. At the end it the female’s body and with these stats many agree with this idea as well. Its better safe than sorry.

Work Cited

Staff, Familydoctor.org Editorial. “Teenage Pregnancy and Birth Control Access.” Familydoctor.org, 14 Feb. 2018, familydoctor.org/teenage-pregnancy-birth-control-access/.
Vyain, Sally, et al. “Chapter 22: Social Interaction.” Introduction to Sociology 2nd Canadian Edition, OpenStax College, Oct. 2012, opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology2ndedition/chapter/chapter-22-social-interaction/.