Do you think birth control should be easily, freely and easily accessible to teenagers? Well, you should. You may be afraid that making it so easily available could cause an increase in the number of pregnancies and disease rates. Not only are these fears unnecessary, but there are great benefits to making contraception available. One of the main fears about making contraception easily accessible to teenagers is that teenagers will automatically think, “Now that I have access to things that can prevent pregnancy, I can have all the sex I want, and I don't have to be afraid of getting pregnant now, so I'll have a lot of sex. This is an understandable assumption, but it is not true. A study was conducted that included New York schools and Chicago schools. Both school systems are very similar. At the beginning of this study, “[both] school systems, [were] a large unified urban system that, [were] ethnically diverse,…[had] a high dropout rate, provide[d] HIV/Education to AIDS… [and] did not make condoms available to students” (Guttmacher, S.). The New York school system then faced a long and arduous battle over whether or not to make contraception accessible to teenagers through their school system, but they ultimately decided to make contraception easily available to their students. A study was conducted before and after making this decision. Before contraception was made available to New York students, "the proportions of students... who were sexually active were the same in both New York and Chicago" and after contraception was made available "New York students ,… [still] reported equal rates of sexual activity but higher rates of condom use [than Chicago]” (Guttmacher, S.). Not only has sexual activity NOT increased, but… al center of document... Cited "Birth Control Pills: Types, Effectiveness, and Side Effects of Birth Control Pills." WebMD, Jan. 26 Web. Nov. 10, 2013.Feldmann, Linda. "Teen Births in US Drop to All-Time Low : What Helped." Christian Science Monitor. September 06, 2013: np SIRS Issues Researcher. Network. November 07, 2013. “IUD.” IUD. Adolescent Health. Network. November 7, 2013. Guttmacher, S., L. Lieberman , D. Ward, N. Freudenberg, A. Radosh, and D. Des Jarlais. “Condom Availability in New York Public High Schools: Relationships to Condom Use and Sexual Behavior.” American Journal of Public Health 87.9 (1997): 1427-433. Print."The truth about abstinence-only programs." The truth about abstinence-only programs. Defenders of Youth, 2008. Web. 13 November 2013. "Why do all medicines have side effects?" Physics Forum RSS. Network. November 11. 2013.