Facts parents and teens should know

Pam Stenzel is a world renowned speaker with decades of experience counseling teens paying the price of sexual “freedom” who frequently lament, “No one told me!”

That post-consequences distress motivates Pam’s efforts to educate teens with the facts needed for informed decisions.

Some of the facts:

• There are two types of STDs: bacterial and viral. Bacterial ones can be cured, if the patient has symptoms and seeks help. Viral infections last a lifetime and you will give them to your future spouse.

• Women are adversely affected by all 30 STDs (up from five in the 1950s) – men only four.

• Condoms do not protect against many of the most serious, and sexual contact of any kind spreads them.

• The more serious effects include infertility (most common), cancer and death.

• Seventy-four percent of the new cases of HPV (six million annually) occur in girls ages 15 to 24. It is highly contagious and causes cervical cancer.

• The cost of pregnancy for a girl: guilt, poverty and/or heartbreak; for boys, new federal law requires wage garnishment – for 18 years.

• Girls should be taught that a boy/man who truly loves her would not pressure her to put her health/life/future at risk for his momentary pleasure.

The power to produce a new life is not a recreational activity but a sacred responsibility to be guarded until all the pieces are in place for that new life to thrive.

Margot Holman