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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3506 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 11, 2023

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Wrote below on some factors in the early 90s, but for my experience in the early 2000s your story sounds more plausible. We didn't linger especially on HIV/AIDS, other than still treating it as a death sentence, but we did also go over the worst case scenarios for every single STD as well as worst case scenarios for birth.

For the birth part, I do wonder if they really thought that part through? It certainly made the girls in my class not want to get teen pregnant, but it wasn't like the worst case scenarios they highlighted applied only to teens and I'm sure it turned at least a few off having children altogether, which I very much doubt was the goal of most abstinence-only groups.

Edit: I'm sure there's a longer post that could be made on how much of the propaganda spread to bring down teen pregnancy rates was too broad and actually served to make pregnancy and childrearing appear unappealing in a general sense.

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