A new study reveals that almost one in five teens has had sex before age 15 and 16, 000 girls under 15 get pregnant each year in the U.S.
The research was a result of the debate over access to Plan B, a morning after contraceptive pill. Opponents contend that the emergency contraceptive pill causes abortions, but medical experts disagree.
In the U.S., customers must be at least 17 to buy emergency contraceptive pills over the counter, and President Barack Obama made comments in 2011 supporting the move by saying 10- and 11-year-olds shouldn't have access to it "alongside bubble gum or batteries," reported Wate.com.
The new study finds that "sex and pregnancy are quite rare among the youngest adolescents, which may be different than the perceptions of many people," said co-author of the research, Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute, which supports access to sexual education and contraception. "There was never a time when a very large percentage of young adolescents were having sex."
For the study, results of surveys done on people born between 1984 and 1993 were collated. The researchers found that about one in 200 females said they had had sex by age 10 and it was non-consensual 62 percent of the time. Almost 1 percent had sex by the age of 12, and it was consensual almost 80 percent of the time. Surveys over the past 50 years suggest that no more than 10 percent of females have had sex by the age of 14. Pregnancy is rare until age 14, although many do get pregnant each year, including about 2,700 girls in 2008 aged 13 and under.
"The people who are most affected by that policy are the ones most likely to be having sex: 15- to 16-year-olds are far more likely than the youngest adolescents, the 10- to 11-year-olds," Finer said.
David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, said that the research doesn't use the best strategies to study the sexual activities of teens because it relies too much on long-term remembrances of childhood sexuality.
