Teen Pregnancy: What Are the Real Costs?

Pro-choice and anti-abortion activists have been quick to take credit for the decline, claiming that widespread access to birth control and fewer abortion facilities nationwide have helped bring about the decline.

But the emotional debate over abortion frequently eclipses what should be of equal concern to the national discourse on reproduction: teen pregnancy. The Centers for Disease Control announced in December that for the first time in 14 years, teenage pregnancy rates are on the rise.


Oddly enough, no group was clamoring to take credit for this particular swing in numbers, though the response from certain quarters was less than surprising. Dr. Gary Rose, chief executive of the Medical Institute for Sexual Health and one of the nation's most prominent conservative abstinence advocates, proclaimed, "Like casual drug use in the 60s, America's current culture has accepted casual and 'protected' sex as the norm. There is a critical need for behavior modification — risk avoidance, not mere risk reduction — if these trends are to reverse."

Any response to Rose's myopia beyond eye rolling is difficult as he fails to understand a plain fact: the rise in teen pregnancy has coincided with the proliferation of abstinence-only programs in the nation's schools — programs which trace their inception back to 1996 when Bill Clinton signed into law a welfare reform bill which included abstinence-only education. When George Bush took office, funding for the program expanded to a massive $176 million in 2007 alone. All told, such programs have gobbled up over $1 billion of taxpayer funds and produced few of their intended results. To gain some perspective on whether this is money well spent, consider this: teen births cost the federal government at least $9.1 billion in 2004, accounting collectively for healthcare, child welfare, incarceration, and lower tax revenue costs.

Of course, "sex" is still a source of shame and embarrassment for many parents, some of whom have gone so far as to sponsor what are known as "purity balls" in which teenage daughters pledge their virginity to their fathers who in turn vow to protect their chastity. Aside from the fact that the whole thing smacks of a grotesquely atavistic and patriarchal ideology, it is worth noting that nearly 90% of girls who make such chastity pledges end up breaking them. Additionally, these girls are less likely to use condoms when they do become sexually active, having forgone basic sexual education, which leaves them at a distinct disadvantage when the need for testing and STD treatment arises.

There is, however, a grain of truth in Rose's claim: America (and the rest of the modern world) has accepted "protected" sex as the norm. And much to his chagrin, the cultural winds are blowing in a decidedly sex-positive direction: the critical and popular acceptance of Juno, a film dealing with the sordid and silly complexities of teenage pregnancy, and the recent disclosure by teen television star Jamie Lynn Spears that she is pregnant at the age of 16 clearly signal that sexual attitudes in America are shifting.