Imagine your life right now. What are you thinking about? School? College?  Friends? Do you enjoy being able to go out and do things with your friends? You only have to worry about yourself and stress out about things like exams and boys/girls. Imagine waking up one day and finding out that you have to take care of another life when you can barely take care and provide for your own? In 2014 48% of teens have had sex by the age of 17. You think to yourself ‘what could I have done to prevent this’? How can you be safe and responsible with so many restrictions on birth control? Who knows you’re ready better than yourself.

Birth control pills being available to minors without a prescription can be beneficial especially to a teen girls health. We all know how it is in high school, everyone wants to have perfect skin but not everyone is so lucky. Being on the pill can help clear your skin from acne Birth control can also help prevent many unplanned pregnancies. It can reduce your odds of getting some different types of cancers like: ovarian and endometrial cancers. Birth control isn’t just used to prevent pregnancy during sex it can also help with painful periods.

Placing restrictions could be harmful and unfair to a teen girl’s privacy. Having to talk to your mother about birth control can be a scary thing. You never know how she’ll react especially if you’re young. Sometimes having to talk to your parents is very discouraging and causes you not to get it. Having restrictions for teens increases the risks of unplanned pregnancies because they aren’t on birth control.

Did you know that nearly 1 in 4 girls will get pregnant at least once before they are 20. Now that is a lot of teen girls getting and unplanned surprise that’ll change their lives forever. 30% of teen girls who have dropped out of high school pregnancy was a key reason. Less than 2% of teen moms earn a college degree by 30. Can you imagine all of your goals for your future drastically changing to fit the needs of your child. 25% of teen moms will have a 2nd child within 24 months of their first baby.

Teenage pregnancy is more common than you may think, there are even celebrities that are teen mothers. One of those happens to be Jamie Lynn Spears. Now we all know her as Zoey from Zoey 101. There was a lot of controversy over her pregnancy because she was only 16 and was involved in tv. She decided to take a break from her acting career to raise her daughter Maddie Aldridge after she was born in 2008, but she started a music career later on. She finished school online and got her GED. Life for Jamie wasn’t always happy and good, she was engaged to the father of her baby Casey Aldridge but they called off the engagement a year later and separated. Things weren’t always bad either, she passed her GED exam, got a house, and was able to experience motherhood which she said was “the best feeling in the world”. “I was a kid who did a kid show. Then I went  away and raised my child, and the world has never met me as an adult.”

Birth control being available to teens could encourage them to have sex before they’re ready. There are many benefits to having birth control available to teens without so many restrictions. Being on birth control does not affect future fertility and having kids when you’re ready to also it’s easy to use. Obviously birth control helps prevent pregnancy and improves a girls health.

In no way do I encourage teen pregnancy, I just think people need to be more aware of it and ways to help prevent it besides telling teens to just not have sex. Teens are going to do what they want no matter what. Me being a teen myself I know I personally don’t always like to listen to my mom. I do however respect the teens mothers that do their best for them and their child, they go through a lot and don’t always get the support that they need. Things like this can be prevented by having less restrictions on birth control. We already have so much to worry about as teenagers whether it’s grades, finals, graduation, college or our futures as becoming adults. Early parenthood doesn’t need to be added to the plate.