Teen Pregnancy

On television, a baby wails uncontrollably. "If you get pregnant," the commercial's narrator says, "this is what the rest of your teen-age years will sound like. You can go farther when you don't go all the way."On billboards, 10-foot-high letters in spray-painted graffiti spell "VIRGIN," above the words, "Teach your kid it's not a dirty word."In classrooms, posters depict the hard realities of adolescent pregnancy in graphic terms. One shows a young man cradling an infant. "A baby costs $474 a month.

Maryland's teen birth rate has dropped for the sixth straight year and is nearly 20 percent lower than in 1991, according to figures to be released today by the governor's office.The statistics will show that 4.39 percent of Maryland girls between ages 15 and 19 gave birth in 1997, the last year for which figures were available. The figure was 5.41 percent in 1991.Maryland's rate continues to be less than the national average of 5.23 percent.Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend praised the state's efforts to fight teen pregnancy, saying the decline "clearly shows our message is getting through."

On teen pregnancy, the state's efforts have really paid offThanks for The Sun's article "Better message on teen pregnancy" (Nov. 9). Many dedicated individuals and organizations work with teen-agers to encourage healthy decision-making, so it is no wonder that Maryland's teen-age birth rate is declining faster than the national average.The state's efforts to address teen-age pregnancy began in 1976 and continue today with the governor's Council on Adolescent Pregnancy's mass media and grassroots initiatives.

WASHINGTON - Maryland teen girls have one of the highest rates of gonorrhea infection in the nation and are more likely than their counterparts elsewhere to be unmarried mothers, according to a recently released report.Those statistics overshadowed the good news in the report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which said that Maryland teen birth rates fell faster than the national average from 1991 to 1996.The report said teen births fell from 54 births per 1,000 females in 1991 to 46 per 1,000 in 1996, a drop of 15 percent.

WASHINGTON -- Positive peer pressure from close friends is helping teens avoid risky sexual behavior, according to reports issued today on Capitol Hill.Rates of pregnancy, birth and abortion continue to drop among teens, according to a 50-state report released by the Alan Guttmacher Institute of New York.The institute reported these national trends for 1996 among women ages 15 to 19:* Pregnancy rates fell 4 percent from 1995, to 97 per 1,000 women.* Birth rates also fell 4 percent, to 54 per 1,000.

Fewer American teens are having babies, and Maryland is helping lead the decline.The Annie E. Casey Foundation, a nonprofit organization that focuses on children's issues, announced yesterday that the teen birthrate has dropped by 12 percent nationally and by 15 percent in Maryland since 1991.A spokeswoman for the state Department of Health and Hygiene said she had not yet seen the report and could not comment.William O'Hare, who compiled the birth statistics along with his assistant, Amy Ritualo, said the decrease in birthrates is a "welcome sign."

After giving birth, a 19-year-old Baltimore resident headed to Planned Parenthood and got her first injection of the contraceptive Depo-Provera. One year later, she "likes Depo because I don't have time to remember to take the pill."This young mother is one of the many teens who are finding Depo-Provera a more convenient, more reliable method of birth control. In fact, family planning counselors say the reason teen pregnancy rates have dropped in both Baltimore and the nation is due, in part, to Depo-Provera.

THE SEX TALK used to be a 10-minute lecture with no eye contact delivered by a parent who seemed to be leaking from the armpits. It is a whole different thing now.Today, the sex talk is supposed to be a "lifelong conversation and conveyance of values."What that means to most parents and teens is that the awkward moment when your father wordlessly handed you a condom or that day when a box of sanitary products mysteriously appeared on your bed has been stretched out to the horizon.The sex talk can now happen at any time, night or day, in the name of teachable moments.

As teen pregnancy rates fall to their lowest levels in decades, religious leaders and family planning advocates -- who once fought bitterly over what messages should be sent about teen sexuality -- are finding quiet ways to work together to keep kids from having kids.With slogans such as "A baby costs $474 a month. How much is your allowance?" and "You can always say no, even if you've said yes before," community leaders around the country are agreeing on broad messages that step over the troubled waters of whether teens are having sex and onto the more unified ground of the economic and emotional consequences of teen pregnancy.

AFTER BRINGING home an abysmal grade on a social studies test, my daughter answered my protests by saying, "Muh-ther. Social studies doesn't, like, matter."I said out loud that I thought her social studies teacher would be disappointed to hear that, but I thought to myself, "Poor guy. I know exactly how he feels."So many parents of teens and pre-teens don't think they matter, either. Even in our own self-conscious youth, we never felt so out of it, so uncool, so unpopular as we do now.All our suggestions are stupid, as are the clothes we wear in public and the things we say in front of their friends.

A report released last week reveals that most of us believe only teens from poor or single-parent families get pregnant. And we are wrong. According to research conducted for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, only 28 percent of those who report having given birth or fathered a child as a teen lived in families with incomes below the federal poverty line. And just 30 percent of those who report having given birth to or fathered a child as a teen say they were living with a single parent.

In the weeks after he was invited to give the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame on Sunday, President Barack Obama seemed like Daniel about to walk into the lions' den. Some religious conservatives and anti-abortion activists expressed dismay that a leading Catholic institution would invite a pro-choice president to address its graduating class; others were even more upset that the school was granting him an honorary degree. Yet instead of being torn limb from limb, Mr. Obama met the challenge head-on with his faith in the ability of reasonable people to disagree and still find common ground on the issues that matter to them.

The federal Food and Drug Administration's decision Wednesday to widen access to Plan B, a morning-after contraceptive that can prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse, was a long-overdue triumph of science over politics. For years, the Bush administration resisted FDA approval of over-the-counter sale of the drug because of opposition from religious conservatives. Even after the over-the-counter ban was lifted in 2006, sales were limited to women 18 or older. That made little sense at a time when teen pregnancy rates were rising fastest among 15- to 17-year-olds.

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.

News that the unmarried teenage daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, is five months pregnant has sparked a media storm to match Hurricane Gustav's disruption of the GOP convention this week. Presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain insists the pregnancy of 17-year-old Bristol Palin is a private family matter. But it raises legitimate questions about Governor Palin's forceful support for abstinence-only sex education policies, as well as the vetting process that led Mr. McCain to choose a running mate with one of the slimmest resumes for high office in recent memory.

BOSTON - Well now, isn't that a relief. The infamous "pregnancy pact" at Gloucester High School turns out to be an urban legend. The media mobs that descended on the fishing town may now pack up their cameras and their moral outrage. It's all over, folks. Except for the 17 Gloucester girls in the late stages of pregnancy or early stages of motherhood. And except, of course, for the 140,000 other American girls between 15 and 17 who'll be having their own babies this year. Let us review the feeding frenzy that seemed to please so many palates.

WOMEN ARE ALWAYS GETTING pregnant on soap operas. They are always having affairs or regrettable one-night stands or having sex while also having amnesia. And getting devastatingly pregnant as a result. The unintended pregnancy is a soap opera plot staple, but it usually happens to the grown-ups. Phyllis is pregnant as the result of her affair with Nick on The Young and the Restless, but she has a grown son. It was a shock because she didn't think she could get pregnant. That's the way teenagers think, too. It can't happen to me. And that's what Lulu Spencer was thinking on General Hospital, when she lost her virginity to Dillon Quartermaine during an unhappy patch in his too-young marriage.

Can I be the only one who finds something wrong with this quote? "They didn't cater to pregnant girls at all. They don't have any sympathy for you. The attitude is, `It's your fault.'" Thus spake Alyssa Boyd, with all the wisdom accumulated from living 17 long years on this earth, in an article by Sun reporter Sara Neufeld that ran Monday. According to Neufeld's article, Boyd was a top student at Western High School before she got pregnant and transferred to the Laurence G. Paquin Middle/High School, which has a history of giving pregnant girls the opportunity to continue their education.

RECENT STUDIES ON TEEN pregnancy and abortion invite us to connect the statistical dots. But when we do, we don't get much of a picture. The Guttmacher Institute, a research group that focuses on sexual health and family issues, reports that 33 states have made it more difficult for poor women and teenagers to get reproductive health care. At a time when the public debate on abortion is roaring to new life, it doesn't make much sense to limit a woman's access to information and services that will prevent an unintended pregnancy, but there you have it. In related news, The New York Times reported that its analysis of data shows that laws that require minors to notify their parents or get their permission to have an abortion have not reduced the number of teen abortions, as had been hoped.

Six years ago, a front-page story reported that oral sex had become a party game among middle-schoolers, and the news sent a shock wave through the ranks of parents who had been thinking they could put their feet up on the coffee table until high school began. That first news report was purely anecdotal, however, and for a while parents could continue to tell themselves, "Not my child." After all, how could an act of such intimacy have replaced "Spin the Bottle" among children who were still unashamed to sleep with stuffed animals?