Texas accounts for the highest teen birth rate in the US. According to the most recent statistics, in 2004 63 births per 1,000 girls ages 15 to 19 were recorded in Texas. Countrywide the teen birth rate has reduced but in Texas this rate has actually increased and is causing alarm to child health advocates. Recently, Child Trends, a non-profit organisation announced that according to latest statistics available, 24 percent of the state’s teen births in 2004 were not the girl’s first delivery.
That astounded me! I mean, what are we doing wrong?
said Kathryn Allen, senior vice president for community relations at Planned Parenthood of North Texas.
The state’s policy to deny contraceptives without parental consent and pushing an abstinence-only sex education program in public schools is being questioned by experts. According to experts from 1991 to 2004, the state’s teen birth rate dropped by 19 percent, while the U.S. rate dipped by one-third. In contrast, California’s teen birth rate has dropped by 47 percent in the same period.
A case in point is Erandy Gonzalez, (17) of Texas, a Hispanic by ethnicity and is already a mother of a 15-month-old girl and is pregnant again. According to the federal National Center for Health Statistics, in 2004, Hispanic girls aged between 15-19 years accounted for 61 percent of teen births.
Though government permission is available for children from financially weaker sections to get birth control medication from community centers. The girls seem to be unaware or only partially aware.
I had heard parents had to go with their daughters,
said Erandy referring to the deHaro-Saldivar Health Center on Westmoreland Avenue, run by the Parkland Health and Hospital System.
But experts say that this is not true. They are just not aware of anything to do with birth control. YWCA young parent educator Tracie Brewer, who is trying to rescue Oak Cliff girls one by one with mentoring and assistance, informed us that she advises them where they can get birth control on their own. Brewer has worked with Erandy, a straight-A student, since March.
She’s sharp. I don’t know when that fails them. They’re intelligent, but they don’t make some good decisions,
said Brewer
This alarming trend of teen pregnancies can be traced to two fateful decisions in the mid-1990s when two Republican governors with their eyes on the White House - California’s Pete Wilson and Texas’ George W. Bush. While Bush endorsed a law that requires schools to teach abstinence as the “preferred choice” for unmarried young people and affirmed parents’ rights to take their youngsters out of sex-education instruction. On ther other hand Wilson passed a far-ranging program of “abstinence-plus” education, media campaigns and state-provided birth control.
Bill Albert, deputy director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, said the California effort hasn’t wavered.
Through Republican and Democratic administrations, they have put an awful lot into preventing teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease,
said Albert.
In Texas, social conservatives such as Cathie Adams of Eagle Forum suggest that liberal abortion policies and not the Wilson program may account for California’s teen birth rate dip - from 74 births per 1,000 girls aged 15-19 in 1991 to 39 in 2004. In Texas, the 1991 mark was 78 births per 1,000; and the latest, 63.
I certainly wouldn’t believe anything coming out of California. I don’t know where abortion comes in under their laws. ... Most anything that plays in California is out of step with the rest of America.
said Adams.
The last time teen pregnancy rates were reported, for 2000, Texas was fifth highest, with 101 pregnancies per 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19. The U.S. average was 84. But four years later though the numbers have reduced Texas has come to the first place.
It is a dangerous trend, not educating teenagers especially girls about the risks of unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and contraception. Abstinance only education just doesn’t work. And in a progressive country like US it is strange that people live in such conservative societies.
Source: Dallas Daily News
