Not hard to chew, right?

Short thoughts on a catchy headline from a top news article on the social news site Digg.com reads, "Teen Birth Rates Higher in Highly Religious States." Immediately I choose to browse and read the article, which can be found here, and is based of the article found here.

Maybe there hasn't been someone here to hold hands and waltz through statistics for you, however, all this information has been published and essentially freely available for years. To the obstinate individuals, I guess it's going to take another 20 years or more for all the facts to sink in or maybe a random epiphany will arise. Really though, a quick trip to the CDC website to look over a 102 page stat sheet, found here, will show you most of the teen pregnancy information you need. The stats and information on the most religious states is here.

The worst part with reading those articles, is two main points: 1. the republishing known facts., 2. there is no unified effort to fix the problem, at least not on any sort of mass scale. When looking around your town, city, church, notice everyone either trying to cover-up or make an excuse about the issue at hand, the pregnancy of teens. What is needed is a drastic change in the approachment of teen pregnancy. However, this is not a call to cater to them OR harass them, but rather develop a new approach founded on love mixed with people who can relate and guide. Do I have the answer? Not at all. Just blatant examples on who not to do.

Typical example of what not to do in cases of teen pregnancy in church:
Excommunication of an unwed teen which has become pregnant, or at least excommunicated from the youth. Excommunication at the young hormonal stage/age on the surface, tends to make them resent church, or the organized area of religion. Who knows what a trauma excommunication is at a deeper level than surface appearance. Excommunication typically breeds rebellion in these cases, which is like pouring fuel on a fire.