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Katherine Tixe
Professor Connie Douglas
English 112 (Section 08)
20 April, 2015
Sex Education: Is it working to prevent teen pregnancy?
Have you ever wondered if sex education in primary and secondary schools do enough to
prevent teen pregnancy? Teen pregnancy is at its highest in the United States for a developed
country. Teen pregnancy is considered bad for teens since it can cause problems for the teens to
finish high school, work, and other plans they had for the future. In addition, raising a child in
such a young age can be unfair to the kid since most teen families in America are poor or middle
class. Sex education is a debatable topic whether it does enough to prevent pregnancy or not.
Most of the articles agree on the effectiveness in preventing teen pregnancy. Kaya Yurieff, author
of Teen Sex, gave the statement that the U.S Department of Health and Human Services
recommends 31 evidence-based programs that have been proven to help teen prevent pregnancy,
ranging from abstinence-only and comprehensive sex education to mentoring and confidencebuilding activities (Yuriedd). Marcia Clemmitt, author of Teen Pregnancy adds to the issue that
ending the only sex-education programs has opened up new programs that are more effective for
preventing pregnancy among teens. Clemmitt also adds that the best approach to prevent teen
pregnancy is toward sex education provided by the Federal government in schools. Intended
audiences for both articles are mostly towards teens and showing statistical information on teen
pregnancy prevention. Both authors seem to be very strong about sex education but explain it in
different ways and both articles are very informative.

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Yurieff writes a good summarization on teen pregnancy throughout the years and sex
education. The authors writes a statistical filled article that backs it up with her main points. The
author has different sections to convey the message across; in her article that talks about either
reason of concern and sex education. The article is organized into different sections that talk
about different things. The form enhances its content because it focuses on that main point.
Yurieff quotes in her article that birth control is less expensive and easier for teens to access in
many other developed countries compared with the United States(Yurieff). However, her
audience can see his as a weak point in her article because she doesnt have enough information
to back it up and raises the question then why are birth rates among teens so high? One of the
strengths that the author has in her article is giving statistical information with sex education and
birth rates among teens. For example: A CDC report says more than 80 percent of teens ages
15-17 had no formal sex education before they had sex for the first time (Yurieff). The author
doesnt really address opposition but does give the point of view of other religious groups that
are for abstinence-only sex education. The author gives an overall look on both sides.
In Marcia Clemmitts article on teen pregnancy, she focuses on how comprehensive sexeducation can help reduce pregnancies. Clemmitt uses the same type of form as Yurieff but
shows more statistical information on many different things. This article is organized in sections
and graphs. This form enhances its content because it breaks it into sections since the article is
long and has all the information in sex education. One of the weaknesses in the article is that she
talks about teen pregnancy up to 2010. Information is accurate but not as current as today. One of
Clemmitt strengths is that she uses statistical information; such as, About three-quarters of teen
births are to women ages 18-19,while only a very tiny proportion of teen births occur among
girls under age 15. The author does address opposition on that sex education is needed in all

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schools including those that are against it. However, she does talk about the positive on having
all abstinence sex-education but has little information on it.
Sex education has significantly proven that it can drop teen pregnancy rates down. Both
articles have shown many points on it and have backed up information to state this claim.
However, Clemmitt article has more information and gives the audience an overview on sex
education and teen pregnancy. In addition, Yurieff gives an appeal to her audience by keeping her
information general. Both articles explain that in todays culture teen pregnancy is high but not
as high as when there was no sex education provided in schools. The big question is even though
most schools do provide sex educaiton, why are teens pregnancy so high? Is there something
wrong with the teaching methods of Sex Ed?