Reducing Teenage Pregnancy

Pregnancy & Childbearing Among U.S. Teens

Although teenage pregnancy rates in the United States are declining, a significant number of American teens have unintended, often unwanted, pregnancies each year, yielding negative outcomes for teenage parents, their children, and society in general. For example, teenage mothers are more likely to drop out of high school and live in poverty, and their children frequently experience health and developmental problems (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998). While millions of American families struggle individually with the emotional and economic challenges that unintended pregnancy can bring, teen pregnancy poses a significant financial burden to society at large — an estimated $7 billion per year (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998).

While children need no permission from their parents to become parents, 30 states currently have laws in effect, or scheduled to take effect, that mandate parental consent or notification prior to a minor’s abortion. Most of these states, however, allow a minor mother to place her child for adoption without her parents’ involvement. Legislators in these states have decided, in effect, that while young women may not be mature enough to decide for themselves to terminate a pregnancy, they are all mature enough to become mothers and to make medical and other life decisions for their children.

Despite Recent Declines in Teenage Pregnancy Rates, 40 Percent of American Teens Still Experience Pregnancy

Between 1995 and 1996, the national teen pregnancy rate fell 4 percent, from 101.1 to 97.3 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15–19 (Henshaw, 1999). This drop contributed to a 17 percent decline since the rate peaked in 1990. Eighty percent of this decline is a result of improved contraceptive use among sexually active teenagers, and another 20 percent is attributable to increased abstinence (Saul, 1999).

• Each year approximately one million U.S. teenagers become pregnant — 11 percent of all women aged 15–19 and 20 percent of those who are sexually active (AGI, 1998).
  
  
• About 40 percent of American women become pregnant before the age of 20 (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998).
  
  
• About 78 percent of teenage pregnancies are unintended, accounting for one-quarter of all accidental pregnancies per year (AGI, 1998).
  
  
• Among sexually experienced teens, approximately eight percent of 14-year-olds, 18 percent of 15–17-year-olds, and 22 percent of 18–19-year-olds become pregnant each year (AGI, 1998).
  
  
• Each year, approximately 19 percent of black women, 13 percent of Hispanic women, and eight percent of white women aged 15–19 become pregnant (AGI, 1994).
  
  

• Among teenage pregnancies in 1994, 55 percent resulted in birth, 31 percent in abortion, and 14 percent in miscarriage (AGI, 1998).

Rates of Teenage Childbearing in the U.S. Are the Highest in the Developed World.

The U.S. teenage birth rate is the highest in the developed world: twice as high as England’s, three times as high as Australia’s, four times as high as Germany’s, six times as high as France’s, eight times as high as the Netherlands’, and 15 times as high as Japan’s (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998; Berne & Huberman, 1999).

Reasons for the lower rates of teenage childbearing in these countries include mandatory, medically accurate sexuality education programs that provide comprehensive information and encourage teens to make responsible choices easy access to contraception and other forms of reproductive health care, including abortion social acceptance of adolescent sexual expression as normal and healthy straightforward public health media campaigns government support for the right of teens to accurate information and confidential services (Berne & Huberman, 1999)

Thirteen percent of all U.S. births are to teens (AGI, 1998).

Preliminary findings show that in 1998, 484,975 women aged 15–19 gave birth, a rate of 51.1 live births per 1,000 women in this age group. This figure marks a two percent decrease from the 1997 rate and an 18 percent decrease from the 1991 rate. Moreover, the 1998 rate is close to the 1986 record low of 50.2 (Ventura et al., 1999).

The preliminary teenage birth rate in 1998 was one birth per 1,000 women aged 10–14, 51.1 births per 1,000 women aged 15–19, 30.4 births per 1,000 women aged 15–17, and 82.0 births per 1,000 women aged 18–19 , That year, the teenage birth rate was 93.7 per 1,000 for Hispanics, 85.3 per 1,000 for blacks, and 45.4 per 1,000 for whites (Ventura et al., 1999)

Seventy-six percent of teens giving birth in 1996 were unmarried. Sixty-nine percent of births to white teens, 96 percent of births to blacks teens, and 68 percent of births to Hispanic teens occur out-of-wedlock (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998). However, teens now account for only 30 percent of all births outside of marriage, a decline from 50 percent in 1970 (AGI, 1998).

Teenage Childbearing and Parenting

In general, teenage mothers do not fare as well as their peers who delay childbearing:

• Their family incomes are lower.
  
• They are more likely to be poor and receive welfare.
  
• They are less educated.
  
• They are less likely to be married.
  
• Their children lag in standards of early development.

About 64 percent of teen mothers graduate from high school or receive a GED within two years after they would have graduated with their freshman class, versus 94 percent of teenage women who did not give birth (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998).

Nearly 80 percent of teen mothers eventually go on welfare. According to one study, more than 75 percent of all unmarried teen mothers began receiving welfare within five years of giving birth (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998).

Although not as severe as those for teen mothers, the effects of early childbearing are also negative for teen fathers. They are more likely to engage in delinquent behaviors such as alcohol abuse or drug dealing, and they complete fewer years of schooling than their childless peers. One study found that the fathers of children born to teen mothers earned an estimated average of $3,400 less per year than the fathers of children born to mothers who were 20 or 21, over the course of 18 years following the birth of their first child (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998).

The children of teenage parents face severe health, economic, and social consequences. Because one-third of pregnant teens do not receive adequate prenatal care, their babies are more likely to be low birth weight, to have childhood health problems, and to be hospitalized than those born to older mothers (AGI, 1998).

The infant mortality rate for children born to teen mothers is about 50 percent higher than that for those born to women older than 20 (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998).

The offspring of teenage mothers are more likely to be poor, abused, or neglected than those of women who delay childbearing, and they are less likely to receive proper nutrition, health care, and cognitive and social stimulation (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998; Maynard, 1997). They are also at greater risk of lower intellectual and academic achievement and social behavioral problems — one study found that children of teenage mothers are almost three times as likely to be incarcerated during their adolescence or early 20s as are the children of older mothers (Maynard, 1997).

Children born to teen mothers are less likely to graduate from high school and more likely to be unemployed and to become teenage parents themselves than those born to women who delay childbearing (Maynard, 1997).

Experts estimate that the annual costs of births to teens totals about $7 billion in lost tax revenues, public assistance, child health care, foster care, and involvement with the criminal justice system. In addition, during her first 13 years of parenthood, the average teenage mother receives approximately $1,400 per year in support from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and the federal food stamp program (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998).

Few Teenage Mothers Choose Placing Their Children for Adoption

Only two or three of every 100 teen pregnancies lead to live births for which the mother makes an adoption plan (National Committee for Adoption, 1989).

Fewer than 10 percent of babies born to unmarried teenagers are placed in adoptive homes (National Committee for Adoption, 1989).

In 45 states and the District of Columbia, a mother who is a minor may legally place her child for adoption without her parent’s involvement (AGI, 1995).

Teenage Abortion Rates Are Declining

About 40 percent of teen pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion (AGI, 1998).

Since 1990, there has been a decline in teen abortion rates — in 1995, 30 out of every 1,000 young women aged 15–19 had abortions, compared to 42 per 1,000 in 1990 (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998). This decline is a result of fewer teen pregnancies, and in recent years, fewer teens choosing abortion (AGI, 1998).

Twenty percent of all abortions in the U.S. each year are provided to women under age 20. In 1996, the total number of abortions in this age group was 166,265 (CDC, 1999).

The top three reasons cited by teenagers for choosing to have an abortion are concern about how having a baby would change their lives, feeling that they are not mature enough to have a child, and financial problems (AGI, 1998).

Access to confidential abortion services is essential to teenagers’ health. Most teens who have abortions involve a parent in their decision; those who do not are frequently in unstable or abusive family situations (Henshaw & Kost, 1992). Laws that mandate parental involvement victimize such teens, yet they do not prevent them from obtaining abortion services. Instead, these laws, which contain judicial bypass provisions, increase the delays teens experience in receiving services, simultaneously increasing the physical and emotional health risks, as well as the costs.