Teen pregnancy drops in U.S.

Jace Radke

Friday, Feb. 20, 2004 | 11:39 a.m.

A decadelong trend of declining teen pregnancy rates in the United States is continuing according to a new report, but Nevada continues to rank among the states with the most pregnant teens per capita.

A new, state-by-state breakdown of teenage pregnancy and abortion rates in 2000 shows teenage pregnancy rates were highest in Nevada, at 113 per 1,000 women ages 15 to 19.

Overall, the national pregnancy rate declined by 2 percent between 1999 and 2000, and fell by 28 percent from its 1990 peak, according to data compiled by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights.

The rate for Nevada is also following the general trend of less teen pregnancies, according to a report released in November by Child Trends, a Washington-based nonprofit group that uses federal numbers to analyze trends in teen sex and pregnancy.

The Child Trends report indicated Nevada had a teen pregnancy rate of 56 births per 1,000 women 15 to 19 in 2001.

"It is improving because I think people in the state have recognized the problem and there is more work being done," said Keith Schwer, director of Kids Count in Nevada, a nonprofit organization focused on measuring the status of children.

Schwer said that single working parents who aren't home as much and the changes that teens go through are among the factors that could play a role in teen pregnancy rates.

"In Nevada there are so many people moving in and those changes and transitions are tough on teenagers," and that can play a role as well," Schwer said.

Fran Courtney, a board member of The Huntridge Clinic, a Las Vegas nonprofit clinic for teens has said that education about birth control is helping to drive down teen pregnancy numbers in Nevada.

Teenage pregnancy, down significantly since the mid-1990s, remains a national problem according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

More than 900,000 girls and young women, ages 19 or younger, become pregnant each year, the national campaign says, noting that each hour 100 teenage girls get pregnant and 55 give birth.

Teen childbearing costs taxpayers $7 billion each year in expenses associated with health care, foster care, criminal justice, public assistance and lost tax revenues, the organization said.

And the United States has the highest rates of teen pregnancy, birth and abortions in the industrialized world, the organization said.

The Guttmacher study showed declines in teen pregnancy rates among all racial and ethnic groups and in every state, continuing a downward trend that researchers attribute to better contraception and less, or more cautious, sexual activity.

Nationwide, one-third of pregnancies among 15- to 19-year-olds ended in abortion in 2000, and the rate of abortions per 1,000 women in that age group declined to 24, down from a high of 43.5 per 1,000 in the late 1980s.

But the data released Thursday also showed that while the pregnancy rate among black teenagers dropped by 32 percent over the decade, more steeply than in other groups, the percentage of their pregnancies that ended in abortion rose to 41.5 percent, up from a low of 39.6 percent in 1995.

Stanley K. Henshaw, a senior fellow at the institute offered several possible reasons for an increase in the abortion-to-pregnancy ratio among black teenagers. One is the withdrawal of Norplant, a long-lasting, implanted hormonal contraceptive, after lawsuits over difficulty in removing it. In the early 1990s, Henshaw said, Norplant was particularly popular with black teenage women who already had one child, a group also more likely to end a pregnancy through abortion.

Other reasons, he said, could be changes in the economy and in welfare policy that raised the cost of having a child. An earlier analysis by the institute concluded that between 1994 and 2000, abortion rates increased by more than 23 percent among both adolescents and adult women with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty level. For both age groups of higher-income women, the abortion rate decreased by as much as 39 percent.

The variation among states on all measures is striking. While teen pregnancy rates in 2000 were highest in Nevada, they were lowest in North Dakota, at 42 per 1,000, well below the national average of 83.6.

The New York Times News Servics contributed to this report.