And this response is probably the BEST I have seen so far in this thread.
Having a child as a teen is probably never really a
good thing, or at least not the
best thing to have happen... But that does not automatically mean it is an all out bad thing in every case.
I know a girl who had a kid at 15. She was a heavy-duty drink all night, skip school for months on end, chain smoking, sleeping with every guy she could, etc etc etc girl. Then she got pregnant... And was too scared to abort, plus had romantic dreams that the father would swoop in and give her a great and wonderful life.
Of course, that didn`t happen. But something else did. She didn`t want to hurt the baby so stopped drinking and smoking. She wanted it to be healthy so started eating right... After the baby was born, she took advantage of some teenage mother program and went back to school. She didn`t go to college, but ended up going through one of those technical programs for work skills - went on and got a job, then found a great guy with twins about the same age as her kid and got married. As far as I know she is happy, and has even said that having the baby turned her life around and was the best thing that happened to her. Had she gone through with an abortion, she`d have probably ended up on the street like her sister.
To make the assumption that it`s ALWAYS the worst thing that can happen is going way too far. Every person is different, and there are going to be at least a handful of teenage mothers who will be excellent parents.
The issue isn`t pregnancy, in my opinion, but society in itself. It`s no longer a matter of saying "Don`t have sex!" or "Be more careful!", as that doesn`t work. I think there needs to be more attention paid to WHY that isn`t working. Figuring out the real reasons why this is happening and preventing it will go a lot further than trying to figure out how to clean up the mess.