By John Mack Freeman
In what looks at first like a counter-intuitive study, Lisa Lindley of George Mason University and Katrina Walsemann of the University of South Carolina have found that teenage girls who identify as lesbian or bisexual are significantly more likely to become pregnant. According to the study which analyzed three years of CDC data, 13 percent of straight-identified teen girls and 14 percent of those with only male sex partners became pregnant. This number jumped to 23 percent of lesbian and bisexual-identified teen girls and 20 percent of girls who had both male and female sexual partners. The numbers also held true (to a lesser extent) for boys who identified as gay, identified as bisexual, or had male and female sex partners.
Researchers and analysts say that this continues to point to the problem of stigmatizing alternative sexualities, particular in regards to teen sex education and their access to health resources. In communities across America, GLB teens are faced with judgment and a lack of positive sex education that could genuinely help combat this issue.
