Editorial: A relief to not be No. 1

Thursday, May 5, 2005 | 9:28 a.m.

For years the very mention of teen births drew expressions of concern and exasperation on the faces of Nevada officials. No matter how many programs had been started, no matter how many goals had been set, the headlines were always the same -- Nevada either led or nearly led the nation in the number of teens giving birth. The news on Wednesday, however, represented a breakthrough. Nevada's teen birthrate has dropped 28 percent since 1991, with no corresponding increase in abortions.

This exceptionally good news was reported by the Clark County Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coalition, which based its finding on statistics compiled by the state Health Division. There was a time when Nevada officials worried if teen births would ever fall. A 1995 report by the Nevada Bureau of Family Health Services explained why there was so much concern.

"Young women who have babies while in their teenage years are more likely to drop out of school, be underemployed, have their babies die within the first year of life and cope with a child with disabilities," the report said. Later that same year, a Nevada health administrator said the problem of teen births "hangs over Nevada as a threatening avalanche of low birthweight babies, high school dropouts, child abuse and a never-ending cycle of poverty from one generation to the next."

Every community in the state was challenged in the mid-1990s to come up with programs to reduce the number of teen births. One Las Vegas program had high school students carrying lifelike dolls with them for several days to impress upon them the responsibilities associated with child rearing.

In recent years, students have been taught in school about abstinence and have learned outside of school from a variety of sources about contraceptives and the threat of sexually transmitted diseases. The decreasing teen birthrate very likely can be attributed to a combination of these sources of education, and to the efforts of state and local officials going back 10 and 15 years who worked to change teen attitudes about sex.

The result of these efforts is a statistic that, instead of provoking exasperation, inspires hope.