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

=== RESPONSES & ARGUMENTS=== //Now, this is where the effect of laws come into place. Laws restricting the age limit for sex, they are like a boundary. A person who is crossing the boundary knows that he is crossing the legal boundary to do the act. i.e. the act is not supported by law.// 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. //Now, just for a moment, imagine that in this world, there are no laws, no legal documents setting forth the minimum age limit for consensual sex. That means, in a household, the minimum age limit would be logically set forth by the parents. Thus there would be a fair amount of teens who lose their virginity at 14. Without any opposition, any stigma. And just remember-they are teens, who live in the high school. Word spreads. Suddenly they are cool, their parents are cooler, and since many their counterparts who are not allowed- well, resentment breeds, they feel angry at their parents who are not as cool, and being a teenager, they feel angry because ‘they are being controlled by their parents', ‘when they are perfectly capable of living their life themselves'. Relation with parents detoriates.// 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. //Now laws, they attach a stigma on those breaking it. They are ‘criminals'. And that is not a very enviable place to be. Whatever the place be, there are some things that no one wants to be. And I'm not talking of psycho-killers; I'm talking of normal healthy individuals, who make up the majority of the population. No one wants to be a criminal. Obviously, the amount of teens doing sex would go low. I don't see what is there to prove about this. Laws have some effect. Laws are there= people following laws are there= less people not following laws are there.// 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] 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. //Also, the teens who are losing their virginity at the age below that specified by the law know that legally they have no rights, if the sex leads to pregnancy. A scared girl doing it for the first time will consider 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?! I turn it over to Pro. === SOURCES === 1. http://www.cdc.gov... 2. http://www.debate.org... 3. http://abcnews.go.com... 4. http://www.montrealgazette.com...