Do you mean me and me??

If so, it is not sarcasm.

First of all, America is not #1 in teen pregnancy. I don't even know what country it would be, but America only leads in the developed world. That much I am sure.

But it is not sarcasm. I am in favour of teen pregnancy and all the developments the CDC reports for a variety of reasons.

1) The earlier the pregnancy, the better the egg and therefore the healthier the baby. Every relevant health threat in the first year that is not due to genetics or extreme environmental stress or malnourishment has a very strong link to maternal age.

2) The earlier the first child, the more children a woman has. (But this does not apply to males) More than half the world is committing demographic suicide. It will be a cultural, social, and economic catastrophe as it kicks in - unless we start reversing it, and fast!! America is one of the few countries that is not committing this suicide.

3) The more young mothers there are (and the younger some mothers are), the less stigma for all of them, and therefore the less stigma for young sex. You cannot hide young sex under the carpet if your maternity wards are full of 15 year-olds. That will be, if the trend does indeed reverse, the most liberating thing for teen girls sexuality ever.

4) The more young mothers there are, and the younger some mothers are, the more that the current system of education and labour will crumble from the sheer pressures of supply and demand. The plain stupid, or plain evil, I no longer even know, public education system, is not and cannot be designed to accommodate large numbers of pupil-mothers (or pupil-fathers for that matter). The huge money grabbing rackets in college education (and esp. so in the USA) will fall because young parents will see the cost/benefit for what it really is. The absurd labour market restrictions for youth, and for doesn't-have-an-ivy-league-degree will also fall because all the young parents will demand, and eventually create, jobs that hire them.

5) The less stigma young mothers (and fathers) have, the more girls and boys will be having sex, because parenthood will not be seen as a reason to be chaste. In turn, this will benefit us, whether or not we even want it or seek it, through the greater sex-positivism and child-positivism of younger generations.

Those are the practical reasons. I have ideological reasons too. All are related to my own conservatism, so you might not want to read them:

6) I do think that p.i.v. should be reserved primarily for procreation, or at least under the understanding that procreation is a likely secondary effect. I think it is likely that this trend will lead to greater diversification of sexual activities, into non-p.i.v. and same-gender activities, when sexual pleaure is sought but not procreation; all of which I regard as positive developments. And there is some evidence that all of these trends are indeed happening.

7) I do think that sex should be risky. Like every other activity, sex should have some amount of risk, and it is in striking the balance between risk and benefit where people can learn, in every sense, from the activity. I think risk-free sex encourages not learning, or much slower learning, from your sexual activity. Because of this, I do like it that less teens are using birth control, that more are resorting to rhythm, and that more are friendly to the idea of keeping a baby.

8) I do think that the "delay sex" or "only risk-free sex" agendas pushed by each the mainstream Right and Left, respectively, are essential tools in infantilising teens, and important conditions in keeping them as second class humans. Delaying sex denies an actual capacity of agency to the minors: "you are not really thinking; your evil hormones are controlling you". Risk-free sex denies an actual capacity of action to the minors: "it's ok to seek pleasure, but you are too dumb to deal with the whole range possibilities, so we are here to protect you". More underage sex, esp. more unprotected underage sex, and esp. underage pregnancies, shoot at the line of all these concepts. All of them. They all liberate minors simply by happening.

So yes, I am pro teen sex and pro teen pregnancy.

And yes, I think it is very much established that more sexual education at school leads to less teen sex and teen pregnancy. Which is why I advocate no sexual education at school. No sex-ed, or abstinence-only sex ed produce precisely the effects I want to see.

(And as a matter of fact, I think many conservatives who advocate no sex-ed or abstinence-only sex-ed know as much as me that it lowers debut ages, and increases teen pregnancy. I think they too like underage sex and teen pregnancy for many of the same reasons I do, but they know they cannot say that publicly. Hm, as a matter of fact, when I advocate against sex-ed outside GC, I rarely reveal the whole story of why I do. I am only telling youse fellow GLers.)