May 11--DALTON, Ga. -- At 13, Christy Ware satisfied her curiosity about sex by having it. She's 25 now and regrets the decision that she said created instability for her 10-year-old son, the consequence of that early encounter.

"I hurt for him," Ms. Ware said at a recent Teen Pregnancy Prevention Forum. "I held him back."

More than 100 people with varying stakes in the teen pregnancy issue convened at Dalton State College for the forum on Thursday, with the objective to tackle the area's high teen pregnancy rates. Among them were physicians, elected officials, social workers, business leaders and teen mothers.

In a state where abstinence-based education often rules, several panelists said current sex education is inadequate. Kim Nolte, of the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention, or G-CAPP, gave the keynote speech, and lamented the lack of safe-sex teaching in the state's schools.

"Sometimes in high school, we say, 'Don't do it,'" she said. "When are we going to learn about contraceptives?"

Dalton High School principal Debbie Freeman said teen mothers often can't get through the whole school year. One reason is that being a mother can lead to transience, she said.

Maria Koporc, 17, was on the panel. She was always a straight-A student in high school, but she didn't know a thing about contraception before she got pregnant, she said.

In most of Whitfield and Murray County, health educators from Dalton's Teen Resource Center teach abstinence-based pregnancy-prevention classes.

"We're not allowed to talk about contraceptives," said health educator Arlena Freeman, but the center's youth development coordinator, Alvah Beasley, said the curriculum has been proven effective.

Still, Methodist pastor Rod Weaver insisted Thursday that abstinence-education alone can't address teen pregnancy. "Abstinence is not working ... their hormones are raging," he said.

Community Center Director Tom Pinson addressed some of those raging hormones on Thursday night, having a sit-down talk with a group of teen boys at the Center.

Mr. Pinson told them not to have sex, but to use condoms if they couldn't wait. "I don't know if it sunk in or not," he said. But, he added, "We've got to start somewhere."

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