After Long Decline, Teenage Pregnancy Rate Rises

Source:  New York Times

“After more than a decade of declining teenage pregnancy, the pregnancy rate among girls ages 15 to 19 increased 3 percent from 2005 to 2006 — a turnaround likely to intensify the debate over federal financing for abstinence-only sex education.

The teenage abortion rate also crept up for the first time in more than a decade, rising 1 percent from 2005 to 2006, according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit research group.

“It’s very disturbing,” said Sarah Brown, of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “We had over a decade of progress on a very serious problem, and I worry that we’ve ground to a halt. I think there are a lot of different factors at play, from less use of contraception, maybe because of less fear of AIDS, to our anything-goes culture, where it’s O.K. to get pregnant and have a baby in your teens.”

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