Think about it: Reducing crime and poverty and ensuring that we have an educated, stable work force has a direct effect on you and me and the future of our country.

Our youth deserve the opportunity to complete their high school and college education, free of early parenthood. Their future children deserve the opportunity to grow up in financially and emotionally stable homes. Our communities benefit from healthy, productive, well-prepared young people.

It's about time we make the well-being of our young people more important than ideology and politics. As a country, we benefit from investing in their future by investing in teen pregnancy prevention.

I'm a very brave person. I can go to North Vietnam, I can challenge my government, but I can't challenge the man I'm with if means I'm going to end up alone.

Children born to teens have less supportive and stimulating environments, poorer health, lower cognitive development, and worse educational outcomes. Children of teen mothers are at increased risk of being in foster care and becoming teen parents themselves, thereby repeating the cycle.

My childhood was influenced by the roles my father played in his movies. Whether Abraham Lincoln or Tom Joad in the 'Grapes of Wrath,' his characters communicated certain values which I try to carry with me to this day.

I remember saying goodbye to my father the night he left to join the Navy. He didn't have to. He was older than other servicemen and had a family to support but he wanted to be a part of the fight against fascism, not just make movies about it. I admired this about him.

While not impossible, it is especially challenging for teenage parents to develop bonds with their children. A high percent of them were themselves children of teenage parents and have never experienced appropriate parenting.

I don't think there's anything more important than making peace before it's too late. And it almost always falls to the child to try to move toward the parent.

It's about time we make the well-being of our young people more important than ideology and politics. As a country, we benefit from investing in their future by investing in teen pregnancy prevention.