Laws Inplace Which Prohibit Sex Among Teens do a Good Job at Reducing the Amount of Teens Having Sex

"I beg to differ. What facts do you have to support this little hypothesis of yours? You see, I have this RADICAL theory myself; teenagers...are horny. They are horny, it's easy for them not to get caught and if their moral principles allow them they will obviously go for it, given the opportunity. In-fact, a government study has confirmed that about 1 in every 3 ninth-graders has had intercourse. [1] And that's not even counting the millions of them who have chosen to have oral sex instead." Okay, so your point here is that 1 in every ninth grader has had intercourse. And that if laws would not have been there, the amount would have been lower? We are debating the stance that laws lower the amount of sex teens undergo. So that little piece of ‘study' does not prove anything. "Lol, nice story you got there. Not only is it a big stretch that obviously isn't going to happen to most people and a blatant appeal to emotion but...it helps your case...how? All you're doing is ATTEMPTING to make a case against lowering the age of consent. That's not what this debate is about." Actually this was just the setup. The main data was below. But it does help my case. If there were no laws, no specific age to ‘legally' have consensual sex, obviously there would be a wide variety of opinions. I was merely pointing out the confusion that would lead to. And also, how that could pressurize some people into doing things they wouldn't normally do. No one wants to be a criminal. And it is not a ‘big stretch'. It's actually quite logical. "HUGE fail. The assertion that laws will solve any problem(not that teen sex is a problem) by simply outlawing it is incredibly fallacious and outdated. In-fact, in many cases it actually makes the problem worse. Law-makers attempt to reduce crime by out-lawing guns, but it's a fact that doing so actually increases crime rates! [2] Like-wise, it's glaringly evident that laws aren't going to have much of an effect on most people against doing something they really want to do, ESPECIALLY when the supposed crime is non-violent. Marijuana is illegal in the United States, yet it's the largest cash crop we have. [3]" You have actually provided some real FAIL data to support your cause, because there is no way one can determine that. There are huge fails in the methodology. Till date, no study has determined if the laws have any negative effect on the crime rate of a country. For the whole argument on this point, refer to link 2, for summary of the argument, refer to link 1, and the basic point of each link is written below. "…any change in crime rate induced by concealed handgun laws will depend on demographic, social, and economic specifities of the observation units. So these laws might lead to increases in crime in some jurisdictions and decreases in others. The results that assume these effects are identical across all counties are, therefore, invalid." So, yeah. Your point is a Fail. (a side note: your debate with Felicia was highly amusing.) " It's the hard to swallow truth but believe it or not people don't really care that much about laws, aside from trivial matters, what people care about is following their own moral codes." And you still have to prove it. "Uuum, you know, there's this thing called protection. It's really neat. Keeps you from getting pregnant. A matter of fact, it turns out that teens who have sex have a less chance of getting pregnant than adults, fancy that. [4] Turns out first timers are actually more responsible. Who would have known?!" And you know, the thing called protection is NOT fool proof. There is a fair amount of chance that it will slip off during the act and will lead to pregnancy. Or STD. A warning label written over the thing provides you ample warning of that. Try looking at the fine print. (Keeps you from suing them if it fails). And your 4th point. The teens have less chance getting pregnant, as compared to adults, well, not only is it NO point at all, since it does not support your case in any way, (until you start arguing that teens having sex are at NO risk), it doesn't matter. Because till the time there is a risk, someone is scared, the laws will still matter. Because ‘someone' knows that they legally have no rights if sex leads to pregnancy, and hence my previous point stands unrefuted. I would like to point out that Con has not given any point in his defense. He's just refuted my points. http://hsx.sagepub.com... http://113.212.161.150/elibrary/Library/Law_Economic/Rubin_The.pdf "And lastly, laws specifying age of consent prohibit sex being ‘sold' to minors, which again lowers the amount." My points still stand unrefuted.