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What is being achieved by having the teenage sex
law which prohibits minors from having sex? Juvenile’s records are
supposed to be kept private, but their sex lives aren’t? Having sex is a
personal choice, and if one wants to have sex why should a law be in his
or her way? Everyone owns his or her own body, and sometimes things
beyond our control happen. A teenager shouldn’t be arrested for urges
that physically can’t be restrained. According to a poll conducted by
People Magazine and NBC News, of the one thousand thirteen to sixteen year
olds questioned, thirty-four percent of them had performed sexual
intercourse for the first time to “satisfy a sexual desire.” To “satisfy a
sexual desire” was the third most major reason for the teenagers to have
had sex, after “[meeting] the right person” and “curiosity.”
A supposed purpose of the teen sex law is to
prevent teenagers (here it applies to anyone under seventeen) from having
sex. Some of the reasoning behind this law includes that a human brain is
not fully developed until age twenty-one. At twenty-one a person can
supposedly be more rational and his or her reasoning is more mature (which
is why in most states the drinking age is twenty-one), than a hormonal
teenager. Even so, eighteen year olds can have sex when their
brains aren’t fully developed. Why is it any different for fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen year olds then?
If there was consent amongst the teens, then
what right do the guardians of the teenagers have to press charges?
According to the People/NBC Poll, seventy percent of the surveyed
teenagers received information about sex from their own parents.
Eighty-five percent of the one thousand parents of the teens polled
claimed they had regular conversations regarding sex with their
teenagers. It would make sense for a teenager to get curious and
experiment, especially if they’re that exposed to information on sex.
Teenagers also receive a lot of their knowledge from other sources.
Fifty-three percent of the teenagers claimed to receive information from
school, fifty-one percent from television and movies, thirty-four percent
from magazines, and twenty-six percent received information from their
siblings. There’s a lot of information available from the World Wide Web,
as well, but only nineteen percent of the surveyed teens stated that the
Internet was one of their informants.
No
law is going to stop two people, whether they are teenagers or adults,
from having sex. Making the law seems as pointless as to trying to enforce
it. Even if two teenagers were caught and charges were pressed by
concerned and resentful parents, an arrest isn’t going to stop the
teenager’s raging hormones. An arrest is also not going to make the
teenagers involved with the intercourse necessarily regret it. An arrest
isn’t going to prevent the teenagers from having sex again. An arrest
isn’t going to scare other teenagers into avoiding sex. Sex is
inevitable. Sex is just more alluring by making it off limit for teens.
Sex can be a beautiful, intimate relationship between two people; that’s
something lawmakers shouldn’t be permitted to spoil.
Sources: People Magazine,
NBC News |
