We owe kids straight talk about sex, a Charlotte Observer editorial about teenage pregnancy on Sept. 4 said. But readers didn’t get any in the editorial.
The premise was that vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol’s pregnancy gives the state and the nation reason to turn away from the current policy of abstinence-based sex education in schools.
The board is infamous for leaving out statistics that if included would contradict its arguments. I immediately became suspicious when the editorial essentially blamed the state’s abstinence-based sex ed policy, which started in 1995, for our current teen pregnancy rate without including statistics on the state’s teen pregnancy rate the year the abstinence policy started. So I took a visit to the N.C. State Center for Health Statistics Web site to see what’s really going on.
The stats on the site badly damage the Observer editorial’s premise, which may be why the editorial writer left them out. Here’s what the Observer‘s editorial board wrote:
“The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found the nation’s teen birth rate rising for the first time in 15 years. It noted the change after a review of births in 2006. That follows a decrease in 2003 that marked the lowest teen birthrates on record.
North Carolina has the 9th highest teenage pregnancy rate. In 2006, that rate was 63.1 pregnancies per 1,000 girls ages 15-19. That works out to one teen pregnancy every 58 minutes, calculates the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Coalition of N.C.
A key to changing that statistic is encouraging kids to make better choices. Since 1995, state law required sex education for middle and high school students to promote abstinence until marriage and to teach kids to say no to sex. (Ironically, that’s the same flawed policy Sarah Palin backed in Alaska.)”
The editorial creates the perception that abstinence-based sex ed programs somehow caused the current 63.1 teen pregnancy rate among young women 15 to 19. What’s missing from the editorial is this critical statistic. When the abstinence law was passed in 1995, the state’s teen pregnancy rate was 112.4 per 1,000 girls and has steadily declined ever since.
In fact, the statewide fall in the teen pregnancy rates since the early 1990s has been so dramatic that N.C. Governor Mike Easley and the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services put out a press release in 2004 taking credit for it.
“It’s time for a more honest political debate about what kind of prevention policies work,” the Observer editorial board concluded. I’d tend to agree. The Observer editorial board could start one with an honest editorial about the real state of teen pregnancy.
The truth about this issue can’t be hammered into liberal or conservative talking points, despite the paper’s best efforts. The dramatic decline in teen pregnancy rates in this country and this state actually slightly predated the state’s and the nation’s turn toward abstinence-based sex education in schools in the mid-1990s. There has been plenty of expert debate, much of it colored by politics, but no real consensus on why the teen pregnancy rate has plunged, or why there has been a slight uptick in it over the last year.
Since the teen pregnancy rate measures the number of teens who get pregnant, regardless of whether their pregnancies end in birth or abortion, the truth is inescapable. Far fewer teens are getting pregnant compared to a decade ago.
The Observer also blew the other premise of its editorial. The board called abstinence-based sex ed “the same flawed policy Sarah Palin backed in Alaska.”
That was an internet rumor that has jumped the blogs and made it into mainstream news print, with the Observer apparently falling for the ruse as well.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Palin has agreed that teaching kids that abstinence until marriage is the only safe way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
“After all, that’s the answer she gave on a 2006 survey during her gubernatorial campaign,” Tribune columnist Clarence Page wrote last week. “But during a debate weeks later, she proclaimed herself ‘pro-contraception’ and said during a debate in Juneau that condoms ought to be discussed in schools alongside abstinence. ‘I’m pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues,’ she proclaimed.”
The Observer ran an editorial two weeks ago thrashing those who have criticized media coverage of Palin. It was headlined “Researching Palin’s Past is News Media’s Duty.”
I agree. It is their duty. They should start now and look into teen pregnancy rates while they are at it.
N.C. teen pregnancy rates
(Pregnancies per 1,000 girls ages 15-19)
1995…………………………………….. 112.4
2000………………………………………. 76.1
2001………………………………………. 69.3
2002………………………………………. 64.1
2003………………………………………. 61.0
2004………………………………………. 62.4
2005………………………………………. 61.7
2006………………………………………. 63.1
Source: N.C. Department of Health and Human Services
This article appears in Sep 16-23, 2008.
