The Washington Post
(U.S.), January
26, 2010
New debate on sex education as teen pregnancies head back up;
In first jump since 1990, rate continues to be highest for minorities
By Rob Stein
The pregnancy rate
among teenage girls in the United States has jumped for the first
time in more than a decade, raising alarm that the long campaign
to reduce motherhood among adolescents is faltering, according
to a report released Tuesday.
The pregnancy rate
among 15-to-19-year-olds increased 3 percent between 2005 and
2006 -- the first jump since 1990, according to an analysis of
the most recent data collected by the federal government and the
nation's leading reproductive-health think tank.
Teen pregnancy has
long been one of the most pressing social issues and has triggered
intense political debate over sex education, particularly whether
the federal government should fund programs that encourage abstinence
until marriage or focus on birth control.
"The decline in
teen pregnancy has stopped -- and in fact has turned around,"
said Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher
Institute, the nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in New York
that conducted the analysis. "These data are certainly cause
for concern."
The abortion rate also
inched up for the first time in more than a decade -- rising 1
percent -- intensifying concern across the ideological spectrum.
"One of the nation's
shining success stories of the past two decades is in danger of
unraveling," said Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to
Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "Clearly, the nation's
collective efforts to convince teens to postpone childbearing
must be more creative and more intense, and they must begin today."
The cause of the increase
is the subject of debate. Several experts blamed the increase
in teen pregnancies on sex-education programs that focus on encouraging
abstinence. Others said the reversal could be due to a variety
of factors, including an increase in poverty, an influx of Hispanics
and complacency about AIDS, prompting lax use of birth control
such as condoms.
"It could be a
lot of things coming together," said Rebecca Maynard, a professor
of economics and social policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
"It could be we just bottomed out, and whenever you are at
the bottom, it tends to wiggle around. This may or may not be
a sustained rise."
The report comes as
Congress might consider restoring federal funding to sex-education
programs that focus on abstinence. The Obama administration eliminated
more than $150 million in funds for such groups, but the health-care
reform legislation pending on Capitol Hill would reinstate $50
million.
The new findings immediately
set off a debate over funding. Critics argued that the disturbing
new data were just the latest in a long series of indications
that the focus on abstinence programs was a dismal failure.
"Now we know that
after 10 years and over $1.5 billion in abstinence-only funding,
the U.S. is lurching backwards on teen sexual health," said
James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth, a Washington advocacy group.
Supporters of abstinence
programs, however, said the findings provided powerful evidence
of the need to continue to encourage delayed sexual activity,
not only to avoid pregnancy but also to reduce the risk for AIDS
and other sexually transmitted diseases.
"Research unmistakably
indicates that delaying sexual initiation rates and reducing the
total number of lifetime partners is more valuable in protecting
the sexual health of young people than simply passing out condoms,"
said Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association,
who blamed the increase on several factors.
"Contributors
include an over-sexualized culture, lack of involved and positive
role models, and the dominant message that teen sex is expected
and without consequences," Huber said. The Obama administration
is launching a $110 million pregnancy prevention initiative focused
on programs with proven effectiveness but has left open the possibility
of funding some innovative approaches that include encouraging
abstinence.
The rate at which U.S.
teenagers were having sex rose steadily through the 1970s and
1980s, fueling a sharp rise in teen pregnancies and births. That
trend reversed around 1991 because of AIDS, changing social mores
about sex and other factors, including greater use of contraceptives,
which pushed the U.S. teen pregnancy rate to historic lows.
The U.S. rates still
remained higher than those in other industrialized countries.
The decline in teen
sexual activity had leveled off starting about nine years ago,
and the teen birth rate began to increase in 2005. It wasn't known
before if the increase was due to more pregnancies or fewer abortions
and miscarriages. For the first time, the new analysis uses those
factors in calculating the teen pregnancy rate.
The analysis examined
data on teenage sex and births collected by the federal Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health
Statistics and data on abortions collected by the CDC and Guttmacher
-- the two best sources of such data.
The abortion rate among
teenagers rose 1 percent in 2006 from the previous year -- to
19.3 abortions per 1,000 women in that age group, the analysis
found. Taking that and miscarriages into account, the analysis
showed that the pregnancy rate among U.S. women younger than 20
in 2006 was 71.5 per 1,000 women, a 3 percent increase from the
rate of 69.5 in 2005. That translated into 743,000 pregnancies
among teenagers, or about 7 percent of women in this age group.
"When birth rates
go up and down, it could be the result of kids getting fewer abortions,"
said John Santelli, a professor of population and family health
at Columbia University. "This shows that it's a true rise
in pregnancies."
The rate remained highest
for blacks but increased for all racial groups. Among blacks,
the rate increased from 122.7 per 1,000 in 2005 to 126.3. For
Hispanics the rate rose from 124.9 per 1,000 women to 126.6. Among
whites, the rate increased from 43.3 per 1,000 women to 44.0.
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