Rapid Population Growth Essay

Teen pregnancies have become much more common with the oversexualized views of our millennial era, and often times young parents cannot handle the stress of the child. In 2013 alone, 273,105 babies were born to women aged 15–19 years. If abortion is not their number one choice, they will most likely turn to adoption, leaving the population problem still in existence. People often use the common phrase “adoption is always an option” but are unaware that there are currently “397,122 children are living without permanent families in the foster care system (Congressional Coalition On Adoption Institute, CCAI). There are too many children, and not enough eligible parents around to take care of them.

Well, "in 1960, there were more households with three or more persons that there were with one or two; today, there are more with one or two persons than with three or more." (Glick) This simply means that the family household is not focusing on having children as much as they were one hundred years prior. During this time women were also allowed to divorce their spouse if they saw fit, which had not been accepted at all even 50 years prior to the 1960's. Adults living alone was also a phenomenon that occurred more frequently during the time of 1960 and 1983. "Throughout the period, however, the number of women living alone was far higher than the number of comparable men."

Out of the 2.5 million people who visit Planned Parenthood clinics a year, the majority are low-income women who have no other alternative. Therefore, defunding Planned Parenthood would only prevent patients, who are already struggling financially, from receiving preventative care. Politicians in congress only want to shut down these health centers because they offer access to safe and legal abortions, without considering the people it would affect the most. Politicians are not considerate of the struggle some people deal with to pay for their health care because they do not deal with the same hardships of everyday people like

Before abortion was legalized in parts of the world, many women would turn to illegal and unsafe methods such as coat hanger abortions. Prior to Roe v. Wade, as many as 1.2 million deaths occurred among women in the U.S because of

Low birthweight babies are at greater risk of blindness, deafness, brain damage, and even death”(Hyde 56). Taking this into consideration, homeless children’s academic performance is hindered because of their poor cognitive development and the circumstances of their homelessness, including constant mobility. Math, reading, spelling, and vocabulary tests are the tests that homeless children most often struggle to succeed on and likely result in being held back a year in school(Hart-Shegos 3). This can be seen in Dicey’s Song through Maybeth’s character and the difficulty she has to prosper in school. Maybeth continually struggles to learn to read and

she was able to regain control of one aspect of women’s personal lives. The birth rate in America steadily declined after this movement, because now women have the freedom of choosing when they want to have children. These social movements continued through the 20th century, and both ideas of being careful with alcohol and domestic abuse, and also the acceptance of birth control are still aspects of women's lives

Most of society today believes that birth control is only used for the “stopping of the egg” in the ovary. There is much more then just stopping the pregnancy. Birth control has many positive side effects which include the following: stops heavy periods, helps prevent painful acne, and can actually cut your chances of ovarian cancer in half. Most girls start to menstruate between age 10 and 15 years, the average age being 12.

Preterm births and low birth weight affect different states in the USA in a variety of ways. For example, research done in 2004 proved that preterm births are common among non-Hispanic African Americans women at 17.8 percent and least among the Asians and the Pacific Islanders women at 11.5 percent. The rate of low birthweight among non-Hispanic African Americans are also considerably high compared to the non-Hispanic white. Low birth weight among children brings creates a lot of problems. Children born with this condition require regular medication which is costly (Tambyraja & Mongelli, 2003).

Sadly even more children are abused than actually reported, “research has revealed alarming rates of abuse in foster care. One independent study after another has found abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes, and the rate in group homes and institutions is even higher. And for reasons related to study methodology... even those figures almost certainly are underestimates” (Richard Wexler). According to Wexler a majority of figures addressing the number of children abused are put together by the child welfare agencies.

Teenage pregnancy is a social problem with biological and physical consequences. Sexual education is now part of the learning area ‘Life Skills” in schools, but teenagers still fall pregnant because they are not open and lack transparency when discussing sexual matters. Teenage pregnancy has always been a medical problem no matter how many young girls are educated about sexual intercourse, condoms, contraceptives and HIV/AIDS. 1.2 Problem Statement

Knowing the statistics of what Planned Parenthood does and how many women and men use these services is important because of the misconceptions are present and prevalent in the minds of many. For example, most believe that abortion is all that Planned Parenthood does and that it is the most popular. However, as shown in the graph, abortion takes of 3% of all of Planned Parenthood’s services. In fact, Planned Parenthood performs STI/STD testing and treatment the most, with the next program being contraception. When the funding in places like Texas is lost, people go straight to abortion, when in fact, these men and women will be losing so much more than most realize.

In 2014, 360,000 women received breast exams, while another 270,000 received pap tests (Klasing, 2017). Both of these tests provide low-income women an equal opportunity to detect cancer early in an effort to receive life-saving treatment before it is too late. Like I’ve mentioned before, so many people associated Planned Parenthood with abortions. I’ve heard so many times, “why should we have to pay for women to have abortions.” However, absolutely none of the government funding received by Planned Parenthood pays for abortion services.

Connecticut case in 1965 were no surprise because not having access to contraceptives women were getting pregnant more. Women did have access to contraception before the Comstock Law was established in 1873. However, women were limited afterwards because not having contraceptives meant they needed to take more precaution when having sexual intercourse. In the Child Trend Data Bank, it was depicted that women from 1945 to the 1960’s in the United States had the highest fertility rate due to the baby boom years as well as not having access to contraceptives. The baby boom years was a period in which birth rates were increasing tremendously after the end of World War II in 1945 due to the soldiers coming home to their

Nancy Kellogg did research on the amount of times children were taken to the hospital based on injuries similar to those of abuse. In her research she realized that female children were more prone to have injuries similar to abuse in their vaginal area because of the level of sensitivity the area has. With further research she then realized that few children were taken to the hospital because of actual abuse. Dr. Kellogg study opened the eyes of many parents who did not realize that giving their daughters bubble baths could cause then so much harm. Out of 184 only 12% of the cases had some type of abuse.

Planned Parenthood gives affordable healthcare through tax money and donations to the people of lower classes that cannot afford a regular healthcare provider. Last year, they received 528 million dollars which many other organizations, government officials, and presidential candidates do not agree with. Presidential candidates are among the many that still do not agree with funding Planned Parenthood with taxpayers money while men and women can not pay for any health care alone. One of the largest stereotypes about Planned Parenthood is that more abortions are made than any other practice. The largest service they perform is STI screenings which are 42 percent while abortions are only 3 percent.