For being only 19-years-old, Hayden Panettiere knows what she believes in and is not afraid to stand up for it. We have seen the Heroes star being very active in the fight against dolphin and whale slaughter in Japan. Yesterday she teamed up with Briston Palin to help prevent teenage pregnancy. They spoke with about 150 teens at a town meeting forum at The Times Center in New York.
“It’s a topic that’s not talked about enough,” Hayden said. “This is just a human thing. It’s natural, it’s what everyone does, but most people don’t realize how serious things are until it directly impacts them and their lives or the lives of the people around them, and I think this is one of those things where as a young female you go, ‘Oh, it’ll never happen to me, oh, it happens to people, but it’ll never happen to me,’ and then it does happen.”
Panettiere was happy Bristol could serve as a fellow teen ambassador for the Candie’s Foundation.
“It’s very nice that she’s come out to support this, and it’s nice to have her,” Panettiere said. “Teenagers get to look at her, and she can say, ‘This happened to me.’ This is all politics aside. She is just a girl out here saying, ‘Look, it happened to me — it can happen to you.’”
According The Candie’s Foundation, the United States has the highest rate of teen pregnancies in the industrialized world. Each year, some 750,000 American teens get pregnant, and, like Palin, 8 out of 10 do not marry the father.
The Candie’s Foundation is hoping Palin’s voice will be just one of many that helps reverse the growing teen birth rate. She advocates abstinence as being the best way to not get pregnant while Hayden spoke for contraception.
“There’s a lot of different viewpoints on sex, and I’m not someone who will ever boo-hoo anything or say, ‘This is not right,’ or, ‘This is wrong,’” Hayden said. “You’re going to do what you’re going to do, but at the end of the day, it’s okay as long as you educate yourself, as long as you’re safe, as long as you’re smart.”
Photo Cred: Fame Pictures
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