D#10, HW#5, Paragraph Revisions with Transitions

“One million American teenagers become pregnant each year,” says Weiss (2006, p.1). One million! This is one of the highest rates in all of the developed countries of the world. The United States, which is the leading country in most everything, is also unfortunately the leading country of unexpected teenage pregnancy rates (Weiss, 2006). Why? What factors could lead to this? One main factor is undoubtedly what the United States has chosen to teach young teenagers…abstinence-only. In theory, abstinence-only sex education programs would be a good idea. Promoting abstinence for teenagers is generally seen as a good thing. However, the abstinence-only programs in the United States are defined by Wikipedia as, “a form of sex education that emphasizes abstinence from sex to the exclusion of all other types of sexual and reproductive health education, particularly regarding birth control and safe sex,” (2007). Seeing as one million American teenage girls are getting pregnant every year, abstinence is clearly not happening. So why not teach teenagers how to have “safe sex”, how to lower the risk of getting pregnant, or how to lower the risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease (STD)? Abstinence-only sex education programs do not delay sexual activity of teenagers, they do not lower the risk of STD spread (in fact in some cases they increase the risk), they do not lower the teen pregnancy rate, and they use scare tactic and false information to teach about sex (National Politics, 2005; Weiss, 2006; Willenz, 2005). In actuality, abstinence-only sex education programs are ultimately hurting the U.S.’s teens.

Another negative feature of abstinence-only sex education programs is the fact that they more often than not deliberately teach false information and factual errors. In 2004 California Representative Henry Waxman released a report that revealed the 11 of the 13 most commonly used abstinence-only programs taught factual errors (Silverberg, 2007). Some errors that U.S. teens are being taught are; misrepresented failure rates of contraceptives, misrepresented information about the effectiveness of condoms in reducing HIV transmission, false claims that abortion increases the risk of infertility, premature birth for subsequent pregnancies, and ectopic pregnancy (Wikipedia, 2007). They also teach that people can get pregnant by simply touching the genitalia of a member of the opposite sex (Public Health, 2004). And these are only a few lies the teenagers are being taught. These abstinence-only sex education programs also taught unproved claims and outright fabrications about gender traits and stereotypes, when life actually begins, and general reproductive health (Public Health, 2004). How are teenagers supposed to learn anything of value if their teachers are teaching them lies? Teenagers should be able to go to class and trust their teachers and be able to believe they are being told the truth.

• These two new versions are better paragraphs because they flow better and the transitions match their intended meaning (such as to signal sequence or addition, to signal coparison and contratst). I think that making sure the tansitions match the intended meaning makes the paragraph much stronger and clearer.