[Vision2020] Birth Control and Teenage Pregnancy

[Art Deco]

v
 [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>


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April 18, 2012
Birth Control and Teenage Pregnancy

An encouraging new report shows a big decline in the rate of teenage
births. From 2009 to 2010, the birth rate among young women ages 15 to 19
fell 9 percent, to 34.9 per thousand, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db89.htm>.
That is a record low for the 65 years that data have been available, and a
remarkable 44 percent drop from the 1991 rate. This good shift is largely
the result of an increase in teenagers’ use of birth control — a fact that
Congressional Republicans ignore as they seek to dismantle reproductive
health programs.

Some voices on the right unconvincingly assign credit for the latest change
to abstinence-only sex education, even though the percentage of sexually
active teenagers has remained fairly constant. Besides, some of the states
with the highest teenage birth rates — like Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma
and Texas — have policies that emphasize teaching abstinence over
comprehensive sex education.

While factors like shifting cultural attitudes and demographics play a
role, the most recent birth rate decline is the result “almost exclusively”
of an increase in contraceptive use, according to the Guttmacher
Institute<http://www.guttmacher.org/media/inthenews/2012/04/11/index.html>.
Analyzing data from an earlier C.D.C. survey, the institute found hormonal
contraceptives were used by 47 percent of sexually active adolescents from
2008 to 2010, compared with 37 percent from 2006 to 2008. Teenagers’ use of
dual contraceptive methods, generally condoms together with hormonal
contraception, rose to 23 percent from 16 percent.

The clear lesson here is prevention works. Yet this lesson is lost on Mitt
Romney and his Congressional allies. Mr. Romney has called for ending Title
X, the 42-year-old program that helps provide family-planning services and
reproductive health care to low-income women, including teenagers.

Like the Republican-led House, Mr. Romney also wants to eliminate federal
financing to Planned Parenthood, a major provider of contraceptive care
nationwide. And he supports repealing the Affordable Care Act, which
requires new health insurance plans to cover birth control without a
deductible or co-payment, a provision that will help prevent many more
teenage pregnancies.
  --
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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