There are many major issues that exist among minorities in our communities. Some of the issues include lack of after school activities, lack of sex education classes in school, high numbers of teens involved in sexual intercourse, homosexuality, and a major issue of teen pregnancy. Teen pregnancy can actually be the result of many of the above mentioned issues. Lack of sex education can be an issue as to why many young teenagers are becoming parents at a very young age. If young woman are taught more about protection, birth control, and how to avoid becoming pregnant at such a young age, the abortion rate along with the number of teen pregnancies in New York City could possibly decrease.
There has recently been a 27 percent drop in teen pregnancy in NYC over the past decade which politicians argue hasn’t been a good enough decrease. There has recently been a huge campaign in NYC which attempts to somewhat scare young women from the idea of becoming pregnant at a very young age. Some of the campaigns speak about the average yearly cost of raising a child, which is said to be between 10 and 12 thousand dollars. Some of the ads send messages that children may not graduate from high school during the standard four years or even at all. Other ads push that the father of the child would most likely not stay with the mother to help raise that child. There are many people that are against these ads which usually consist of a picture of a toddler with a different message on each of them. They are against them because they feel as though it is not the correct way to steer young women away from becoming pregnant at such a young age, and also these statements does not apply to everyone and therefore are not facts.
These billboard ads also portray that the childhood of the babies born to teenage parents would be much harder than those of the children whose parents are older and have a more stabilized lifestyle. The idea is to however not try to stop young women from having children at such a young age, but if they choose to, to support and respect their decisions and provide or give them insight on the many available programs that can be useful to them as teenage parents.
