Do you think requiring a permit to have sex would help slow down unwanted pregnancy?

Haha, a lot of teen lads would get their permit & then get penalised for “speeding”
“You got 21secs to go, you got 21secs before you gotta go…”

Pregnancy permit? You’re nuts.

China tried to do something like that (one child per family) – and even in a totalitarian country like China that didn’t work.

Rather than punish people for having sex, we ought to make birth control a required vaccination (or at a minimum – free easy access to birth control of any kind) very early so that kids will learn responsibility at a young age.

If we made it easier to control births there would be less stigma in the first place.

Don’t punish ‘bad’ behavior…. promote desired behaviors.

I think it would be much more effective to just sterilise ever male at birth.
All pregnancies would then require artificial insemination, which can be tightly regulated.

No, of course not!

Just what the world needs – more governmental intrusion into people’s lives.

One question for anybody who would think this is logical. Think about the times you have had sex. Would you be willing to forego it at that moment to wait a few days to get a permit?

So instead of a fake ID I got when I was 19 so I could buy booze, I’d get a fake ID at 14 so I could get laid? “Hey babe, I gotta permit!”

So how does this stop two teenagers from having sex?

This makes no sense. Even if it sounded remotely reasonable, which it doesn’t, it wouldn’t work.

If the government bans alcohol, that will totally stop people from drinking, said America during prohibition.

What we really need is more comprehensive sex ed. I live in a liberal state, where sex ed started in 5th grade and covered all the basic forms of contraception. Even so, there was a strong anti-sex message. The fail rate of contraceptives was emphasized again and again, along with abstinence being the only thing that’s 100% effective. I bet a lot of kids came out of it thinking, “well, condoms don’t really work, so why even bother.”

Come to think of it, our anti-drug program was pretty bad too. It lumped in weed (basically harmless) with hard drugs like heroin. There were slogans like “Just Say No” and we were taught that smoking weed just one time basically turns you into a crackhead. If the people in charge can’t make distinctions like that, it’s probably why getting marijuana decriminalized is taking so long. (I don’t actually care if it’s legalized. D.C. just reduced it to something like a $25 ticket rather than jail time. That’s a step in the right direction considering the way drugs are enforced here.)

Getting rid of that kind of faulty thinking in our curriculum isn’t easy. It looks like things are trending in the other direction, with more and more abstinence only sex ed around the country. Bleh.

If you pose penalties for young kids getting pregnant you will undoubtedly push the kids to not want to come forward for proper help with their situation and we will be back in the 60’s with back alley abortions with a rusty coat hanger.

You’ve got to be joking!

Yeah, it should be a lot of fun watching them trying to enforce this, ha ha.

Not the most practical idea.

Ive read that there are countries in Europe (Sweden, Denmark come to mind) with incredibly low teenage birth rates with apparently as many teenagers having sex as here in the US (according to anonymous polling).

The biggest difference is in the frank sex education, even ads on TV for contraception as well as low cost easy access to birth control for any age.

And apparently it’s working. Their attitudes are far more practical regarding sex and emphasis is on postponing pregnancy until in a position in life to hold responsible jobs and be able to support a child.

To me, that seems a whole lot more sensible than trying to prevent hormone soaked teenage brains from succumbing to sexual urges.

It would be like herding cats!

@Buttonstc – but you have to tie the sex education aspect of Europe with the comparative secularization of Europe. With some exceptions, you don’t have a near-theocracy in most European countries like we have here in the US.

Probably the major thing militating against sex education in the US is the religious crowd – who thinks that if kids don’t learn about sex, it won’t take place.

@elbanditoroso I agree with you, although the OP says in the details, “What if it was required for people to wait till they were at least 16 years old to take parenting and safe sex classes.” And it doesn’t sound like @Pandora is motivated by religion.

@elbanditoroso “Probably the major thing militating against sex education in the US is the religious crowd – who thinks that if kids don’t learn about sex, it won’t take place.”

Yup. And that line of thinking worked out great for my mom and grandmother, both of whom became pregnant by the age of 16.

@elbanditoroso

I agree. Our Puritan heritage does us no favors.

@dappled_leaves is right , I am not asking based on religious reason. I’m am asking because there are grown people who are burning babies, abusing babies or neglecting them. I don’t believe it is because all are crazy. I think it is extreme lack of example and poor anger management control with a list of other reasons. Sure. Some are a mental health issue but others are probably because they were never raised in a proper home. But I bet the majority is because they simply were not ready. (ok burning babies does seriously lean toward crazy)

I agree with some of the statements. It wouldn’t work. Teens can be a pretty uncontrollable bunch, but my point is that nothing we do is working all that well. Teens don’t really think about consequences when they have sex. How do we drive this home and make them think about it. I know I avoided sex, because of the fact that I didn’t want to be a single mom. Not because I didn’t have offers as a teen. Nor was it because of religion. But it may be because I saw what it was to have two parents in the home and I wanted that for my future children. Or maybe because I knew single moms who never seemed to be home and when they were, they were busy doing chores instead of taking some time to enjoy life with their kids. Or maybe because, I saw through my brother and his girlfriend, how extremely selfish they were when they had my nephew. They knew nothing about sacrifice. And he paid the consequences.

I don’t think the children of today understand or really look at the good and the bad of life.

“Teens don’t really think about consequences when they have sex. How do we drive this home and make them think about it.”

Educate them. The solution is really much simpler than requiring permits or whatnot.

@Darth_Algar Agreed – it is about education, pure and simple. Teens don’t want to get pregnant any more than we want them to. The problem is that they don’t know enough to reliably prevent pregnancy.

When Fluther was really rocking, we used to get questions regularly from teens who were afraid they might be pregnant, and didn’t know whether it might be possible in their circumstances. Many of them don’t know what they’re doing, and are afraid to ask people they know, for various reasons.

Forestalling education until they can “earn a licence” or some other thing is the exact opposite of what they need.