Plan B In Pop Culture

Births to teenagers are rising (435,000 babies were born to mothers between 15 and 19 years old in 2006, the first increase in nearly 15 years). Since government funded abstinence-only education doesn’t contribute much to teens’ knowledge about sex, STDs, and pregnancy, they can either get the information from their parents or pop culture. And because most parents have a hard time broaching the subject, pop culture it is. The things is, movies and TV shows aren’t doing their part when it comes to educating young women about their options. And, no, we’re not talking about abortion. As we wrote earlier, a small study showed that many young women haven’t even heard of Plan B, and they definitely don’t know how to get it. Below, a few examples of cases where Hollywood skipped over Plan B this year, limiting teen girls’ options to keeping the baby, putting it up for adoption, or having an abortion.

Sure, it would kind of ruin the above story lines if the girl hadn’t either a) gone through the agony of waiting to see whether she was in fact pregnant, or b) had to deal with being pregnant and everything that goes along with it. But it certainly would be nice for a character to show young women that there’s another precaution they can take if they seriously goofed and had sex without using birth control, or if their method malfunctioned.