Middle school Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Middle school - Essay Example According to Staff (2007), middle school students between the age of twelve and fifteen are driven by peer pressure to engage in sexual activities. Though there has been concerns about the safety of these middle school students in terms of the side effects of birth control measures (Staff, 2007), it is worth noting that the benefits of providing birth control among school going teenagers far outweigh the drawbacks. Therefore, contraceptives should be made available to school going teenagers particularly in schools. This paper presents an argument in support of provision of contraceptives to middle school teens. One of the reasons in support of provision of contraceptives to middle school teens relates to education. Welsh (2012) posits that "Half of girls who had children before age eighteen graduate from high school and less than two percent earn a college degree by the time they are thirty". In other words, teenage pregnancy denies them a right to education. In essence, this is attributed to the challenges associated with pregnancies particularly health issues. In addition, the pregnant teen has to drop out of school in order to take care of the child. Access to contraceptives can thus help prevent unplanned pregnancies among middle school students and consequently elevate their chances of completing their education and a better future. The case of T.C. Williams school for instance presents an illustration of the benefits of contraceptives to middle school teens. Before the clinic was moved to the school, a total of fifty pregnancies were reported within a year. In the first year of the c linics relocation to the school, the number of reported teen pregnancies dropped to thirty five and twenty in the second year (Welsh, 2012). As noted by Welsh (2012), individuals who argue against issuance of contraceptives to middle school girls argue that the practice would encourage more teenagers to engage in dangerous sexual activities.