Program offers obvious solution to teen pregnancy

Only about one in five young people do not have sex while teenagers. Most young people start having intercourse in their mid-to-late teens, about eight years before they marry.

While 93 percent of teenage girls report that their first intercourse was voluntary, one-quarter of them report that it was unwanted.

A sexually active teenager, who does not use contraceptives, has a 90 percent chance of becoming pregnant within one year. And, while 90 percent of the sexually active women use a contraceptive method, they do not do it consistently or always correctly.

Each year, almost a million teenage girls, 10 percent of all females aged 15 to 19, and 19 percent of those who have had sexual intercourse, become pregnant.

A single act of unprotected sex with an infected partner carries a one percent risk of acquiring HIV, a 30 percent risk of getting genital herpes and a 50 percent chance of contracting gonorrhea -- each year, 3 million teens, or about one in four sexually experienced teens, acquire a sexually transmitted disease.

Nearly four in 10 teen pregnancies, excluding those ending in miscarriages, are terminated by abortion. There were about 274,000 abortions among teens in 1996.

Those frightening statistics, compiles by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, seem to carry one obvious warning to unmarried teenagers: Don't have sex.

An obvious solution, but one which goes against many aspects of the prevailing popular culture.

A speaker and pop-style musical group are trying to rectify that, through a series of visits to area schools Wednesday and Thursday.

Doug Herman, a sexual abstinence speaker from Littleton, Colo., lost his wife and daughter to AIDS contracted by a simple blood transfusion. His speech, "The Sex Appeal: Challenging students to sexual abstinence, character and respect," has been delivered to thousands.

Also appearing are LaRue, a brother-sister music team from Nashville, who have released two albums and travel with their parents and twin sisters.

Sponsored locally by the A Baby Conceived Pregnancy Help Center, the program will be open to the public Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Fox Theater.

There is no admission charge, but those who would like to support this effort can made donations directly to the ABC Pregnancy Help Center, P.O. Box 42, McCook NE 69001, specifying Herman/LaRue in the memo section.