Family

Teenage Pregnancy Month: being informed can change your whole life

Dialogue and information: the keys to preventing teenage pregnancy.

The National Month of Adolescent Pregnancy, which is celebrated during the month of May, recalls the need to keep lowering the rates like the United States has been doing for years; this phenomenon is considered a drama that must be defeated to guarantee safe adolescence and a later peaceful and happy life project.

If you are a teenager or your daughter is within that age, you should keep an open dialogue to prevent teenage pregnancy.

“It is very critical to be a teenager at 13 or 14 years old and start a sexual life for which you aren’t prepared. If you are looking for information to take care of yourself, health centers treat you badly, and you won’t return. If the girl gets pregnant, her parents kick her out from home, and her couple, the one who didn’t want her to use protection, leaves her. If she returns to class, the other parents consider her a bad influence on their children. Everything goes wrong for a teenage girl”, says María Doris Paredes, an adolescent who is 14 years old and participated in a study about teenage pregnancy for UNICEF.

As a mother, it is very important to show your daughter that you will always be able to talk about these subjects; if she feels you are judging her, she will ask for advice somewhere else and won’t be the same, you should speak to her with love and understanding.

If you can’t help her, reach professionals who are willing to advise you. No one will transmit the message about the risks of facing a teenage pregnancy like a mother to her daughter. Resources are waiting for your call.

As a teenager, you must understand that you own your body’s power and can choose what contraceptive methods to take. Your couple has no voice or vote, and the one who will deal with an unwanted pregnancy will be you.

There will always be resources and people willing to inform and help the child; the more the merrier. You should bring a child when you are ready and enjoy that magical moment with your family.

Schools, churches, and health centers are places that can give you advice on how to avoid teenage pregnancy, which if taken for granted, may damage your life project, generate more poverty and cause more abortions.

Drug and alcohol abuse don’t collaborate preventing teenage pregnancy. They make it much worse. If you stay away from them, your mind and body will be safer.

Many resources are waiting for you, do not hesitate because they can make a difference and change your whole life and future:

Birth Control, STD Testing & Abortion – Los Angeles, CA (plannedparenthood.org)

Women’s Health – Boyle Heights Los Angeles, CA: Family Care Specialists Medical Group (fcsmg.com)

Transition Age Youth Public Health Toolkit (lacounty.gov)

Adolescent Family Life Program (ca.gov)

AHWM: https://www.adventisthealth.org/white-memorial/services/womens-care-maternity/welcome-baby-program/

 

You can also find more trusted local services in your community at www.boyleheighstresources.org or download the Boyle Heights Resources app.