Teen pregnancies

I read the following article the other day…

US teen pregnancy rate up after a decade

By JoAnne Allen

Washington – The US teen pregnancy rate rose in 2006 for the first time in more than a decade, reversing a long slide, a US think tank reported.
The overall teen pregnancy rate was up three percent in 2006, with a four percent rise in the rate of births and a one percent rise in the rate of abortions, according to the report by the Guttmacher Institute.
The United States has higher rates of teen pregnancy, birth and abortion than in other Western industrialised countries.
There were 71 pregnancies per 1 000 US girls aged 15-19. In 2006, seven percent of all teenage girls got pregnant, according to the report.
Fewer black teenage girls got pregnant, closing a gap with Hispanic teens. But rates among both groups were still significantly higher than for white teens, the report said, and rates went up for all ethnic groups.
"We’re not quite sure yet whether this is just a blip or whether it’s the beginning of a longer upward trend," Larry Finer, Guttmacher’s director for domestic research, said.
"It’s interesting to note that this flattening out of the rate and the increase in the rate is happening at the same time that we’ve seen substantial increases in funding for abstinence-only programs," Finer said.
"We do know that when we saw the big decline in the ’90s, that a lot of that decline was due to improved contraceptive use among teens."
The abstinence-only programs, backed by many social conservatives who oppose the teaching of contraception methods to teenagers in US schools, received about $1,3-billion in federal funds since the late 1990s.
The Obama administration’s 2010 budget eliminated spending for abstinence-only, shifting funds to pregnancy prevention education that include abstinence along with "medically accurate and age-appropriate" information.
New Mexico led the states with the highest teenage pregnancy rate with nine percent, followed by Nevada, Arizona, Texas and Mississippi.
New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Minnesota and North Dakota had the lowest rates of teen pregnancies. – Reuters

The pro-abstinence believer in me groans at an article like this: so full of obvious journalist tactics to sway the audience.  The English teacher in me delights at an article like this: so full of obvious journalist tactics to point out to my students.  Note the use of authoritative statistics?  The naming of authoritative people and groups?  Said authorities quoted?   The glaring omission of alternate explanations?

How about – the Western World is saturated in sexual messages in all shapes and forms.  And increasingly so in the last decade.  Virtually all mainstream sitcoms, drama series etc feature non-married adults hopping in and out of bed.  Movies, games and internet social media all perpetuate the image that sex is a normal, expected part of any dating relationship – and in some cases, any relationship.  You’re strange if you don’t – according to Hollywood and glossy America.  Perhaps the $1.3 billion in federal funds doesn’t quite match up to the multiple billions of dollars worth of sex education that the movie and media industries churn out….  Perhaps?