Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ittvax!wex From: wex@ittvax.UUCP (Alan Wexelblat) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Birth control and education Message-ID: <885@ittvax.UUCP> Date: Wed, 27-Jul-83 09:36:31 EDT Article-I.D.: ittvax.885 Posted: Wed Jul 27 09:36:31 1983 Date-Received: Wed, 27-Jul-83 21:26:10 EDT References: ihlpf.174, <5590@unc.UUCP> umcp-cs.1171 Lines: 19 Liz Allen has made the claim that as sex education has spread, teenage pregnancies have gone up, thus implying a correlation between the two. Well, incidents of cancer have increased dramatically in the last few years. Can we therefore infer that sex ed causes cancer? Of course not. I would like to see Ms. Allen's statistics. Even if this is the case, it seems to me that the increase in pregnancies might be attributable to any number of other factors (increasing poverty, rising cost of medical care-- at the moment the Pill costs ~$10/month, and is going up at about $.50 cents per month [in the Philadelphia area], improper use of birth control). The point is that one cannot simply say "There are more teenage pregnancies," and use that as an excuse to keep teens in ignorance. Beleive me (I've recently finished that stage in life), the adage about 'If they don`t learn it in the classroom they`ll learn it on the street' is true. --Alan Wexelblat decvax!ittvax!wex