OMG! TEENAGE PREGNENCIES YAH!

I know I don't post very often, I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you with this one, I promise. It's a bit of a weigh in about some rumours that have trickled down into my newsfeed (late, like normal for me) about the age of consent being lowered.

The only people to ever get pregnant as teenagers...

As always, Facebooks reactions to current affairs is hilarious, and with the heat being cause of a certain mathematic teacher and his underage love affair (you'd think he'd be able to do the math. hyuk hyuk) I don't doubt this latest bout of Facebook mania would be due to this, the best course of action beubg to blurt out that the UK is set to/ already has changed it's sex laws to state that children of the age of 14 are now enabled to have sex. Fear not! It's preposterous.

Now, here's where my interest comes into play.

It's apparent that not a single person who believes this story to be true actually understand how politics work. The government don't just decide what laws to pass, and then do it, they go through vigorous debate. This is why you should be involved in politics, so that you're not playing fool to stupid chain mails.

Further more, whilst researching the possibility of such a claim (of which I found not only no evidence, but negative evidence. There are articles talking of age of consent discussion in 2009) I came across a comment on Yahoo! answers which states that this would be an unwelcome law to be passed, what with pregnancies at an all time high.

See that blue colour? That's illegal here.

With the latest information I could find, that being of 2010, Teenage pregnancy in the UK is actually on the decrease, with 2010 actually having the lowest pregnancy rate since 1969. This idea that The Daily Mail and The Sun are driving down your throats that all teenagers are pregnant comes from the comparison to other countries, such as France (with their age of consent being 15) And Spain (13). I'm not suggesting that age of consent has a direct impact on teenage pregnancy, I dare say alcohol has an impact as well, you know, not being allowed to drink at a young age, so you go out and get as drunk as you possibly can... but I think it's clear that having stringent laws does have a negative effect on the actions of the people. As many philosophers have said through the ages (don't ask me to quote any, I'm making that up. It sounds convincing, doesn't it?)

TL;DR we're not changing the consent age to 14, teenage pregnancy isn't at an all time high, and we should seriously consider not being so damn conservative.

And I'm not even skimming on the "moral implications" that would have on paedophiles! Rest assured, I'll be hammering that one out some time in the near future. It's a sensitive topic, and I don't want vigilante mobs to attack me like they did that doctor...

So I hope this was informative for you! As always share and comment, and make sure you do your homework when confronted with something you don't know about/ understand. And no, homework is nothing like commenting on their post asking if it's true. I dare say they didn't do their homework either.

Source(s):

Yahoo! Answers Page: http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120820192128AA1vJN4

BBC News Article on Teen Pregnancy: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17190185

Teenage Pregnancy Compared with EU: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1079321/

Age of Consent in Europe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Europe