It sounds like sex-ed (teaching kids about contraceptives) and improved access to contraceptives are working. Abstinence is also playing a role as a quarter of the drop among 15 to 17 year old women is attributed to a reduction in sexual activity. Ethnic disparities though still need to be addressed. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46310316/ns/health-womens_health/#.TzLa08hjHDE Teen pregnancy, abortion rates at record low CHICAGO — Birth and abortion rates among U.S. teens fell to record lows in 2008 as increased use of contraceptives sent the overall teen pregnancy rate to its lowest level since at least 1972, a study showed on Wednesday. But disparities among racial and ethnic groups continued to persist, with black and Hispanic teens experiencing pregnancy and abortion rates two to four times higher than their white peers, the Guttmacher Institute, the nonprofit sexual health research group that conducted the analysis, said. The Guttmacher researchers looked at government statistics on teen-age sex, pregnancies and births, as well as the institute's own data on abortions for 2008, the most recent year for which all the numbers were available. They found that nearly 750,000 U.S. women under the age of 20 became pregnant in 2008 -- nearly 98 percent of them between the ages of 15 and 19. That translated into a pregnancy rate of 67.8 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19, the researchers said, the lowest pregnancy rate seen since 1972, the year before the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that established a woman's right to an abortion. It was also down 42 percent from 1990, when teen pregnancies peaked at 116.9 per 1,000 teen girls and women. The teen abortion rate in 2008 dropped to the lowest rate seen since 1972 at 17.8 per 1,000 teen girls and women, the analysis found, and was down 59 percent from 1988 when the abortion rate peaked at 43.5 per 1,000 teen women. The Guttmacher researchers said the decline in teen birthrates was largely attributable to increased contraceptive use by teens of both genders. "Teens are also using more effective forms of contraception," said Kathryn Kost, a demographer with the Guttmacher Institute who co-authored the analysis. Among women aged 15 to 17, about a quarter of the long-term decline in pregnancies, births and abortions could be attributable to reduced sexual activity, the researchers said. But pregnancy, birth and abortion rates remained much higher for teens who belonged to minority groups, even though their overall rates have fallen over the past four decades. Birth rates for black and Hispanic teens were more than twice those of their white peers in 2008, the researchers found. The abortion rate among black teens, meanwhile, was four times higher than the rate for their Caucasian counterparts. Abortion rates for Hispanic teens were twice as high as for their white peers. The Guttmacher study was funded with grants from The California Wellness Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
The thought of the bitter beer face is the best contraceptive? Seriously though, this is good news. I hope people who are anti-abortion welcome this news. Actual data and reduced #s of abortions should be the goal, it seems to me, versus making a law that may or may not have much of your desired effect. Finally, is this a good thread to bring up the Louisiana rep. who thought that an Onion article about a new abortion complex, with movie theater, was real?
Louisiana Congressman Mistakes Onion Story for Factual News First of all, if you’ve never read Literally Unbelievable and are in need of a self-confidence boost and a laugh, be sure to pay the blog a visit. It’s a Tumblr site dedicated to Facebook users who interpret satirical Onion stories as fact, often in a fit of belligerent incredulity. A recent entry features a wall post from Representative John Fleming, a Republican from Louisiana, who failed to realize that the Onion’s “Abortionplex” facility was, in fact, a joke. The Representative linked to the story, commenting to his nearly 30,000 followers: “More on Planned Parenthood, abortion by the wholesale.” The post is now deleted, of course, but obviously immortalized elsewhere on the Internet. The article claims the $8 billion Abortionplex is a “new state-of-the-art fetus-killing facility located in the nation’s heartland” that offers “quick, easy, in-and-out abortions to all women.” The satirical article also explains that the new abortion center features “amenities such as coffee shops, bars, dozens of restaurants and retail outlets, a three-story nightclub, and a 10-screen multiplex theater — features intended not only to help clients relax, but to foster a sense of community and make abortion more of a social event.” A few minutes after Fleming posted the story to further the ongoing abortion discussion, a follower commented, “The Onion is satire. How exactly did you get elected?” Screenshots were captured, and the rest is history. Despite the onslaught of mocking headlines, Fleming doesn’t appear to have publicly responded. Onion editor Joe Randazzo, however, has caught wind of the flub. “We’re delighted to hear that Rep. Fleming is a regular reader of America’s Finest News Source and doesn’t bother himself with the New York Times, Washington Post, the mediums of television and radio, or any other lesser journalism outlets,” he said in a statement, as reported by Politico. Hudson Hongo, the brains behind Literally Unbelievable, said he finds it “extremely satisfying to see a politician being made the rube by just the kind of sensationalism (in this case satiric), that they seem so adept at manufacturing these days.” link
The rates were down under Clinton too and up under both Bushes. Sex ad and contraceptives have been proven to work to reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortion. Abstinence only programs have been proven not to work. When folks like Rick Santorum talk about abstinence programs and opposing easy access to contraception, it's really hard to say they play a role in reducing abortion in this country. The teen pregnancy and abortion rates have traditionally been down during Democratic/pro-choice presidencies and traditionally up under Republican/pro-life ones.
The combination of opposing abortion while supporting abstinence only sex ed is really inconsistent. That type of sex ed is a nice idea, but it doesn't work. Kids still have sex at the same rates, only now they're lacking valuable information they would've received under real sex ed. A lot of those programs push outright false information so not only are the kids uniformed, they're misinformed as well. I'm really amazed these things are still allowed to exist. So it's no shock that participants in those programs end up having unwanted pregnancies do largely to ignorance. To not inform those kids, to misinform them, and then to tell them they have to keep the baby when some inevitably become pregnant is just messed up. I'm actually moderately pro-life on abortion. But I wouldn't want to see the law changed unless abstinence only education was banned as well as gay adoption made legal. If abstinence only education worked, I'd be all for it. But it doesn't and it's mindblowing to me that people still continue to support because they care about the idea of it more that the outcomes.
Unless I am reading this chart wrong, the overall teen (15-19) pregnancy and abortion rates have declined steadily every year since 1990, except for a bit of an uptick in 2006. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/USTPtrends08.pdf
Boredom, low self-esteem and a lack of a sense of purpose or direction after high school; that may never change.
Good point. I don't watch much p*rn, but my understanding is that you would probably never see Santorum in one. And if you did, that movie would not sell very well!
This article is about 2008..the last year Bush was in office - and it credits contraception + higher abstinence rates as a cause, not just contraception alone.
(1) ... with underage girls? (2) ... with advocating contraception options and education? (3) ... with his islamo-commie plot to destroi Ahmericuh!!! (3A. Advocate for contraception and education. 3B. ??????!!!! 3C. Teen pregnancy and abortion increase.) I really fear your choice here. It's #3, amiright?
Santorum: Obama Has Put America On ‘The Path’ Of Executing Religious People By Decapitation SANTORUM: They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is the government that gives you right, what’s left are no unalienable rights, what’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a long way from that, but if we do and follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.
Off topic: Teenage girls on hormones seems like such a bad idea. From a pure medical health standpoint, I wonder if it is better to get a early term abortion. Obviously emotionally, financially, morally, politcally etc contraception is better, but what about cancer, early menopause, osteoporosis, whatever. Seems like a bad idea to jack with a girls hormones at such a young age.
