Teen Health Clinics Cant Afford More Budget Cuts :: Medical Medicine Essays

Teen Health Clinics Can't Afford More Budget Cuts missing works cited â€Å"It was 1971 and I was 16,† said Deborah, of Methuen, who’d rather not use her last name as she talks about the time when she was a pregnant teen. â€Å"I, of course, freaked out and didn’t want to tell my parents, especially my father. I had to, though. There was no way around it. There was no where else to go.† In the 1970s, Massachusetts didn’t have half the teen pregnancy clinics they have now. Teens didn’t have a place to turn to if home wasn’t an option. Teen pregnancy was the last thing that communities were concerned with. According to Deborah, â€Å"pregnant† was a word you just didn’t say back then unless you were married. There were all kinds of negative connotations attached to it if you were unwed. People assumed you were promiscuous, immoral, a drop-out, etc. â€Å"No one saw it as an accident that could happen to anyone,† said Deborah. Deborah was living in Lawrence and attending hairdressing school when she first got pregnant. She was still living at home with her parents and younger sister, but far from financially stable, as any teen mother would be. â€Å"I went on welfare after my baby was born and lived at home for about a year,† said Deborah, â€Å"while I worked on getting my G.E.D.† As far as accepting her pregnancy goes, her own aunt and uncle disowned her. â€Å"I felt a lot of guilt from people. I got a lot of stares, comments. It was very uncomfortable,† said Deborah. â€Å"You’d think that at 48 years old I’d be comfortable with it, but feeling that way stays with you.† Teen pregnancy in Massachusetts has changed quite a bit since the 1970s, not only in numbers, but in the way society responds to it. According to The National Campaign for Teen Pregnancy, the rate is the lowest it’s been in three decades, 25.8 per 1,000 females, down nearly 20 percent from 1970. Some say that the ever decreasing rate is relative to how teens are now more aware than ever of what being a teenage mother really entails. â€Å"Massachusetts now has one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the country,† said Erin Rowland, communications manager at Planned Parenthood in Boston, adding â€Å"Comprehensive sex education is a big part of that.† Planned Parenthood is one of many organizations now in Massachusetts working towards educating teens about sex and all its repercussions.