The Centers for Disease control recently reported that, for first time since 1991, the birth rate among teenagers has risen. During 2006, the number of births among women ages 15 to 19 rose by 3 percent to 41.9 live births per 1,000, with the most dramatic increases among African-American teens whose birth rate climbed 5 percent from the previous year.

Teen childbearing hurts the young moms, their new babies and the country as a whole. Consider these alarming facts from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy:

• Teenage childbearing costs the government at least $7 billion each year in costs associated with health care, foster care, public assistance, criminal justice and lost tax revenues.
• Children born to teen mothers are more likely to have health problems including low birth weight, infant death, blindness, deafness, chronic respiratory problems, mental retardation and hyperactivity.
• Children of teen mothers are more likely to suffer abuse and neglect.
• Children of teen mothers are 50 percent more likely to repeat a grade and less likely to finish high school.
• Teens who have babies are less likely to graduate from high school than those who delay childbearing.
• Teen mothers are more likely to end up on welfare - 52 percent of all moms on welfare had their first child during their teenage years.
• Sons of teenage mothers are 13 percent more likely to end up in prison than the sons of mothers who delayed childbearing.
• Daughters of teenage mothers are more likely end up as teen parents.

Even before the 2006 increase, the U.S. teenage birth rate was higher than that of any other industrialized country. And according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, nearly four in 10 girls get pregnant once before the age of 20. Yet, the government spends $176 million per year on programs to prevent pregnancies among young women, raising questions about the effectiveness of the Bush administration’s abstinence-only sexual education efforts.

A recent comprehensive study by Mathmatica Policy Research, Inc showed that teens who participated abstinence-only programs were no more likely than those not in the programs to delay sexual initiation, have fewer sexual partners or abstain from sex entirely. While this one study may not completely discount the merits of abstinence-based education, it warrants the beginning of a discussion of how to best encourage young people to delay childbearing, through a mix of responsible sexual education and abstinence-based messaging.

Thankfully, the three current Democratic presidential hopefuls have made reducing teenage pregnancy one of their top priorities. During her husband’s administration, Hillary Clinton helped launched the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, which successfully reduced teen births by one-third between 1996 and 2005. She has pledged to continue her work to break the cycle of teen pregnancy if elected president. This summer, Barack Obama introduced the Communities of Color Teen Pregnancy Prevention Act of 2007, which would prevent teen pregnancies in minority communities. And John Edwards has made fighting teen pregnancy one of the cornerstones of his anti-poverty solutions.

In November 2008, America will go to the voting booth to elect the next president. We must demand that he or she make reversing this troubling trend a national priority.

This entry was posted on 12.11.2007 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Economic Opportunity, Helping Families, Ending Poverty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.