At first, Nicole Lewis was surprised to hear that the 17-year-old daughter of the Republican vice presidential nominee is pregnant. But on second thought, Lewis figured the news wasn't so surprising. Teen pregnancy can happen to anyone.
Lewis, 28, was a teen mother herself. Fresh out of a Virginia high school, she found herself abandoned by her friends, who didn't understand why she didn't just get an abortion, and isolated from the family she had let down.
Now college-educated and working at Baltimore's Healthy Teen Network, a national teen pregnancy clearinghouse, Lewis hopes the experience of the daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will call attention to the need for services for teen mothers. "I was basically on my own," she said.
Bristol Palin's pregnancy has people across the country talking about the unique challenges associated with being a teenage mother and debating the merits of sex education versus abstinence promotion. In Maryland, some who work with pregnant girls and young mothers say the situation exemplifies the need to teach teens about birth control, while those promoting traditional family values counter that policy judgments should not be based on a single case.
Nationwide and in Maryland, the teen pregnancy rate rose slightly in 2006 after more than a decade of decline, leaving public health experts bewildered. In Maryland, the 2006 rate inched up to 33.6 births per 1,000 teens ages 15 to 19, after years of steady declines and a low of 31.8 in 2005. Even Baltimore, where the teen birth rate has for years been twice the state average, saw a marked decline before a 2006 increase.
Richard P. Barth, dean of the University of Maryland School of Social Work, said some of the prior declines in teen births could be attributed to the emergence of school-based health clinics in the past two decades. Barth also points to studies that show parents talking to their children more about methods for preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. He said eight years of federal funding for abstinence-only education has not helped teens understand how to avoid pregnancy.
Some experts say the national trend upward, which was seen among every race and ethnic group, should remind policymakers and public health experts to redouble their efforts to confront the issue.
