Ever read anything so shocking that you had to run to the Internet (or your husband the pediatrician) to make sure you didn’t just dream it? That’s pretty much what happened the other day when I causually perused my hubby’s new issue of Contemporary Pediatrics. Did you know that the United States has the highest teen birth rate of all developed countries – and not by a little? At 31.3 births for every thousand females aged 15-19, the U.S. easily leads the United Kingdom (21.8), Australia (18.7) and France (9.6). This is not a race we should be proud about winning.
Even scarier than the sheer numbers is the fact that according to the Center for Disease Control nearly one in five births to adolescent girls aged 15-19 in this country are repeat births. That means that 86% of teen births are repeats. Yikes! Are we doing something wrong? I was under the misguided impression that we were raising a whole generation of teens who understood the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and the risk of teen pregnancy.
On a positive note, even though the U.S. teen birth rate is 1.5 times as high as the second-highest-ranking United Kingdom’s and twice as high as Canada’s, we can claim that our teen pregnancy rate is lower than any rate we’ve recorded in history. From 2012 to 2013, births to teenage girls dropped significantly according to the annual report “Health, United States, 2014” released by the National Center for Health Statistics.
For years the country’s sex educators have insisted on perpetuating the message of safe sex. But in a surprising turnaround, the American College of Pediatricians is now strongly endorsing the message of abstinence until marriage.
Dr. Diane Foley, M.D., who is president and CEO of The Life Network, was interviewed by Contemporary Pediatrics. In the article, she is quoted as saying the abstinence education message is based on more than 25 recently published studies that show adolescents who have had sexual risk avoidance education are much more likely to delay the onset of sexual activity.
Foley explains that the current push for abstinence education is based on the CDC’s youth behavior risk surveys that consider five areas of behavior risk including drugs, alcohol, smoking, violence and sexual activity. The abstinence education message is clear and in sync with the CDC message to adolescents: the only way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and unwelcome pregnancies is to abstain from sexual activity until one is in a mutual monogamous sexual relationship with an uninfected partner.
But Foley also acknowledges the arguments against sexual risk avoidance education and reassures parents that while abstinence is a lifestyle choice that the ACP encourages, it is not considered a contraceptive choice, and contraception is discussed as a viable way to reduce certain sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.
