You can say what you like about morality and values and abstinence and sexual mores, but I have news for you: Teenagers have sex. Most of them. They have since the beginning of time. Like, a lot of sex. It appears to be the primary thing many teenagers are thinking about. In fact, a recent study about the major decline in teen pregnancy found that the reduction wasn’t due to teens having less sex — it was because they’re using more contraception. (Imagine that.) So why have we obstinately and resolutely turned a blind eye to this wholly natural, if somewhat embarrassing, fact?In May, I traveled to Kenya with OneKid OneWorld , an organization near and dear to my heart. OKOW rebuilds and refurbishes schools in the developing world, and I have taken many such wonderful trips with them. Over the years we have observed a very important fact about girls in school. If you do not address their health needs with regard to their developing bodies and sexual activities, you cannot keep them in school, period. Shame, teenage pregnancy, and often terrible infection lead them to drop out. Bit by bit, month after month. The mortification of using a dirty sock as a sanitary napkin or bleeding through their one pair of panties is just too damning to endure. An unwanted pregnancy changes them overnight from an aspiring office worker to a 14-year-old mother who gets to haul water and sweep the floor for the next 16-plus years.This year, OKOW delivered 900 reusable sanitary napkin kits made by a remarkable group called Days for Girls . And as part of our mission, we explained, in excruciating and often hilarious detail, how each kit works. Most girls are too shy to ask a question about such things in front of their class (this is true all over the world), so my friend Tracy, with whom I was conducting the class, and I asked them to write their questions down on a piece of paper and pass them to the front. Oh boy.“A man told us you cannot get pregnant the first time you have intercourse.”“Is it true you can’t get pregnant if you are having your monthly?”“If I have not had my monthly in four months but I have not laid with a man is there something wrong with me?”“If I have had an infection for many months but I wash with laundry detergent will I get better?”“What do you do if a man tells you he will not love you if you do not want his baby?”“If I have not had my monthly for three months am I pregnant?”And on and on. There is only one way to answer such questions: with complete honesty and a total lack of embarrassment. Keep in mind, these are the lucky girls in this area — the ones who attend a good school with a nurse and likely a government-sponsored health clinic within one (long) day’s walk. And they still can’t get the answers they need.