Wednesday, April 11th, 2012
Stephan: This is good news overall, that is unplanned teen births are down significantly. However, it's not quite that simple. While they are down the U.S. still has more such births than any other industrialized nation and this is largely true -- and this is the revealing part -- because the Theo-rightist states have orders of magnitude more unplanned teen births than social progressive states. Clearly, states with comprehensive sex education produce better social outcomes than 'abstinence only' states. Yet the Right continues to press for abstinence only. Wisconsin just passed, and Governor Scott Walker signed, a bill mandating just such a failed policy. A triumph of ideology and theology over facts.
The number of new teenage mothers in the United States is at its lowest level in nearly 70 years but remains the highest of any major developed country, according to official figures released Tuesday.
The current rate of 34.3 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19 is down 44 percent from a peak in 1991, and is 64 percent lower than the record set during the 1957 ‘baby boom
