I grew up in the pre-pill era. Pregnancy was a serious deterrent. I doubt anyone under 50 today can even imagine what it was like thru the 60s for a single woman to become pregnant. Then, somehow, it became “fashionable” to have children born out of wedlock. The 80’s brought us AIDS, which I believed acts to some degree as a deterrent, at least to promiscuous sex among otherwise intelligent people.
One problem is the “intelligent” qualifier. What these people seem incapable of understanding is that in having sex, they are essentially sleeping with every other person that partner has ever had sex with, and every other person that those other people have had sex with, ad infinitum. The potential exposure to disease is phenomenal.
The CMA, recognizes that there is a segment of our population, usually but certainly not always, poor, uneducated, young, and very sexually active. Their exposure to deadly diseases if off the charts. While you or I would have thought of ‘consequences,’ these people just don’t. The real question is how to change behaviors that are so well embedded in those subcultures.
It didn’t become fashionable, it became profitable.
I remember a congressman saying on the floor of the house once, he]] they are retired at 18, who can beat a deal like that. He was describing the benefit package for an unwed mother.