“Teen pregnancy is 100 percent preventable,” says Marisa Nightingale, Senior Advisor for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “What else can you say that about?” It’s a good point, one Nightingale and her colleagues at the Campaign (seen in pictures here) hope to drive home to teens today (May 5th), which marks the ninth annual National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Throughout the month of May, teens and their parents are invited to take The National Day Quiz, which poses six real life scenarios— everything from sexting to sex on the first date — and asks participants to choose what they would do if faced with a similar situation. “The quiz is one way we can really challenge teens to think about how they would handle a risky situation,” says Nightingale, adding that 50 percent of teens say they’ve never thought about how a pregnancy will affect their lives. “They have to think about what they would do before they do it.”
As far as societal issues go, teen pregnancy is one whose dial has moved drastically over the years, thanks in large part to the Campaign’s efforts. More than 200 national organizations and media outlets serve as official partners of the National Day, including The Candies Foundation, ABC Family and MTV. From 1990 until 2005, teen pregnancy and birth rates declined steadily by more than a third, which was good news, no matter which side of the pro-choice/pro-life argument you fell on. But in the past few years, rates have reached a plateau. And since there’s a new crop of kids who haven’t heard the pregnancy prevention message yet, the quiz becomes more relevant than ever, especially since it speaks to them in a language — and format — that’s familiar. (StayTeen.org, the Campaign’s teen driven website is also accessible on both Facebook and Twitter.)
Last year, 450,000 teens participated, a number the Campaign hopes to surpass this year, and 61 percent said that the quiz had made the consequences of sex and pregnancy seem more real to them. It’s a boon for parents too, who may want to talk to their teens about sex, but have no idea where to begin. The quiz comes with discussion guides which makes starting an often awkward conversation (you never forget that “sex talk” do you?) a little easier.
Though the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy was launched in 1996, the idea for a national day dedicated to the cause wasn’t hatched until 2002, when the Campaign and the now defunct Teen People magazine joined forces to figure out a way to draw national attention to the problem of teen pregnancy. Despite the declining rates, nearly 3 in 10 teen girls still get pregnant each year in the United States by age 20 and 1 in 6 girls will become a teen mother. “Rather than having a rally in Washington, we wanted to do an online activity that teens could take wherever they are,” says Nightingale.
This year, in addition to the quiz, the Campaign has launched the Stay Teen Block Party, a series of nine trivia games and puzzles that test players’ knowledge of pregnancy facts and myths. For added incentive, teens between the ages of 13-19 who complete the game can be entered into a drawing for a 32GB iPod Touch. The Campaign is also running the Stay Teen Pregnancy Prevention PSA Art Contest, where teens with an artistic edge are invited to create a slogan that spreads the pregnancy prevention message. The top five winning entries get a $250 prize. (For contest rules visit StayTeen.org.)
All of these activities will hopefully appeal to teens and help the Campaign reach their next goal: to reduce the teen pregnancy rate by another third by 2015.“The lives today’s teens lead may look different than when we first started, but some things haven’t changed,” says Nightingale. “Delaying sex is the only way not to get pregnant, and if they are having sex, they have to use contraception every single time.” It couldn’t be any clearer than that.
Photos courtesy of © SNAP.