TWO separate US studies have found that two thirds of girls who become pregnant as teenagers were sexually abused as children. Often they became pregnant because they did not realise that they had a right to say "no". Deborah Boyer of the University of Washington, author of one of the studies, said that these girls are usually abused by family members who are able to blur the girls' ability to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate expressions of love towards a child. The girls' personalities become "sexualised" and they believe that their only value is through sex.