After Long Decline, Teenage Pregnancy Rate Rises

NY Times ^ | January 26, 2010 | Tamar Lewin

[UAConservative]

After more than a decade of declining teenage pregnancy, the pregnancy rate among girls ages 15 to 19 increased 3 percent from 2005 to 2006 — a turnaround likely to intensify the debate over federal financing for abstinence-only sex education.

The teenage abortion rate also crept up for the first time in more than a decade, rising 1 percent from 2005 to 2006, according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit research group.

“It’s very disturbing,” said Sarah Brown, of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “We had over a decade of progress on a very serious problem, and I worry that we’ve ground to a halt. I think there are a lot of different factors at play, from less use of contraception, maybe because of less fear of AIDS, to our anything-goes culture, where it’s O.K. to get pregnant and have a baby in your teens.”

While teenage pregnancy rates for whites remain far lower than for blacks and Hispanics, the pregnancy rates increased for all three groups.

As previously reported, births to young women ages 15 to 19 — a statistic that is available more quickly than pregnancy and abortion data — rose from 2005 to 2006, and again from 2006 to 2007.

Since the teenage pregnancy rate is made up of births, abortions and miscarriages, it is likely that the teenage pregnancy rate rose from 2006 to 2007, as well.

But several experts said it was too soon to predict whether teenage pregnancy and birth rates would continue to rise, and revert to the record high levels of the 1980s and early 1990s.

The Guttmacher analysis examined federal data on teenage sex, births and abortion, along with the institute’s own abortion statistics.

[UAConservative]

“This new study makes it crystal clear that abstinence-only sex education for teenagers does not work,” said Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

And her choice of sex ed is aborting every single pregnancy.

[struggle]

I blame Jersey Shore.

[UAConservative]

I watched 10 minutes of that trash, and finally had to turn it off.

P.S. 5-6 of those minutes were commercials.

[A_Tradition_Continues]

I blame Bill Clinton...for once it’s not Bush’s fault.

[SpaceBar]

It means the children of the last batch of promiscuous kids have reached puberty.

[RonInNaples]

Or it means that since over 50% of these kids don’t have jobs, they are, instead, having sex to while away the hours. Especially those hours while Mom and Dad are still at work.

[pnh102]

0bama’s fault.

[zorro8987]

who said “abstinence works every time it’s tried” - I guess that was Rush...

[zorro8987]

“This new study makes it crystal clear that the focus of TV and popular culture today, even for _children_, is far too sensual and sex-crazed...” ... It takes a strong person to go against the flow of that culture. [actually i don’t think it’s possible without God’s help & probably the influence of good parents]