Mississippi now has the nation’s highest teen birth rate, displacing Texas and New Mexico for that lamentable title, a new federal report says.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090107/ap_on_he_me/med_teen_births
The “liberal” state of New Hampshire has the lowest in the nation.
Your thoughts?
Well, there have been many people trying to link the fact that Mississippi is a red state to the teen birth rate problem, but that doesn’t hold water because New Mexico is a blue state, which just happened to go red by a few hundred votes in 2004, so the “Republicans don’t teach sex ed” argument doesn’t hold water.
I think it has more to do with the fact that there are more abortions in blue states.
EDIT: Peter H is a “top contributor” who thinks New Mexico is a conservative state. LOL It must have been a while since he visited here.
Sex Education must be working great
That’s what happens when you live in redneck areas where people don’t believe in birth control or abortion because “God told em they gotta keep dem babies” … sad for all those little kids, because they also live in conservative states where they will be sent to prison for a very long time inevitably after growing up in an unstable, poor, single mother home.
El Tecolote, New Mexico is very conservative for the most part, save Albuquerque where I’m originally from, and it’s the religious people in the small towns all over that have babies because they don’t use birthcontrol and don’t get abortions
Poor “IHateLau” … doesn’t know what a rate is.
… oh and “El Tecolote” actually it’s been 3 months since I last went back to New Mexico, where I was born and raised. My New Mexico knowledge> yours. sorry.
abstinance must be working for them.
because the libs keep getting abortions.
It’s just another statistic and for tha matter what about the top 10 states in mentall ilness went for Obama.
I’d take a guess that the more “liberal” states have more sex education which is at least getting through to some of the teens. If there is no real education then how are they going to learn the basics of keeping themselves safe. Our school (canadian) even had condom dispensers in the bathrooms. We learned everything from birth control to STD’s and yes even abstinence.
There’s a lot of inbreeding going on in red states…
I’d like to see the teen abortion rates in the liberal state of New Hampshire.
Mississippi has the highest percentage of Blacks in the Nation
New Hampshire has the lowest percentage of Blacks.
Duh
Liberals are more likely to have abortions, or allow their children to get one. Also abstinence only sex education programs don’t work.
They have more people than Alaska.
Most people on Welfare are unmarried white women with children- beyond that it brings to mind that particularly hot scene in Cool Hand Luke where that teasing, curvaceous kitten is tormenting the chain gang while washing the her car in the oh so hot sun and getting all wet and sudsy while doing so with many a taunting glance- hot damn. Just makes ma blood boil thinkin’ about it. It must be the weather.
Missipippi has a huge black and Hispanic teen population in poor areas…nothing new, but it’s almost laughable because the state is running constant commercials on PBS, especially the Sunday talk show circuit claiming to have a highly educated, motivated work force, a pro business “can do” “tude”. Just ask their newest biz partner, Toyota. I’m sure Toyota is simply delighted by this revelation.
You’re also comparing a state that has 620 thousand people to a state that has over 3 million….. hmmm, hope that didn’t go right over your head.
Mississippi is also 37% black.
Vermont……..0.7%
Your thoughts on that?
What else would you expect from a 3rd world country. They are near the bottom of every public health category, education level and annual income.
wow.
from the article:
“kids in mostly white New England likely would delay child birth, said David Landry, a researcher at the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based organization which supports abortion rights and gathers research on sexual and reproductive health.
“It’s more costly for youth in the Northeast to have a teen birth than for youth in the South, in terms of opportunities they’ll miss,” he said.
As far as I’m concerned, this jerk can take a flying leap. Who is he to dictate that the “opportunities” pursued by white New Englanders (like himself) are of better, rather than different, quality than anyone else’s?
But such idiotic talk is to be expected from eugenicists, and that is what this man is. There are more teen births because believe it or not, large numbers of Mississippians are more comfortable around babies, born in wedlock or out, white, black, hispanic, WHATEVER, tons of babies, than they are with having an “abortionist” in their community. That’s their culture. It’s not access to “sex education,” but about access to abortion.
read the last paragraph carefully, as well as the article’s use of the term “extra” births. which human beings, precisely, are “extra?” I wonder how long it will be before the Guttmacher (let’s translate that roughly—”Fix It”) Institute will refer to these infants as “surplus population.”
Chi, these should not be partisan issues, and they are becoming urgent. Much of this is not about a “right to choose”—powerful people often promote this phrase, yet they believe themselves to be the choosers. Please take a moment to look at the scholarly book here. :
http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/
thanks for posting the article. take care
1st NM and Mississippi are Liberal so that part is BS. The problem starts in the home, we don’t know the economic situations. NM and Texas have a large Hispanic population who in Mexico and south America do marry young. We don’t know the percentages of the pregnancies that were Hispanic (non citizen). The biggest common factor is low income people. NM Native Americans have about 75 % unemployment. The hurricanes that hurt Mississippi may have lead to high unemployment (was there a high rise in Hispanic population?). Unfortunately it is the minorities who are mostly unemployed and low income. Regardless of race low income and unemployment those teens without a strong family kids have more of a tendency to have low self esteem, a need to be wanted and they use less birth control. It is not race as much as their culture in what is exceptionable within their communities. Many see nothing wrong with sex and marriage at 14-15 while others believe it is all wrong. We in America seem to think teenagers should wait until they are 18 or older to get married (sex). Reality check that has never happened to my knowledge in any culture 100%. The big difference is maker in families was the welfare system of the 50-60′s where if you were married you couldn’t get welfare if the husband was able bodied so white and blacks divorced or wouldn’t get married because they couldn’t feed their children without welfare.
So my answer would be a lack of education, low economics and cultural issues make up the biggest possible reason’s for high teen pregnancies. What they don’t tell you in the study but my experience would say that maybe as high as 75% of those boys & girls used alcohol and or drugs.
I hope that answers your question
Comprehensive Sex Education didn’t do anything to increase or decrease amount of teens having sex, it just prevented the number of pregnancies.
And I think Abstinence sex ed is misleading.
There needs to be another way of going about it. I believe teaching about birth control is a good idea and should be done, but I don’t think teenagers should be having sex. I also don’t think that a 14 year old girl, who knows little about the world and is very vulnerable, should have THAT much power over herself–meaning I don’t think she should be necessarily encouraged to keep secrets from her parents. Birth control is one thing, if she truly believes she needs it and doesn’t want her parents to know–but encouraging secrets from her parents, I’m sorry but I think that’s sending mixed messages.
I think that teenagers should understand that no form of birth control determines that they are ready, mature, responsible, or ready to deal with the emotions and stress that comes with it. I think that teenagers shouldn’t be sexualized, and I think they should focus on the fact that pregnancy, or deciding on abortion are NOT things they are going to want to face at their age. It only takes once for them to be facing a life changing decision.
Forget about the fact that “abstinence doesn’t work” and “comprehensive sex ed is better…” because frankly, I think both of them send the wrong message. I think we need to make it so that teenagers can be safe AND learn what they’re getting into. If we focused on that, I think we could save people a lot of emotional stress.
And yet here we are. Millions of dollars spent on an industry of birth control pills, condoms, the patch, the shot, spermicide, diaphragms, tube-tying, IUD’s, they’re even trying to make microbicides to protect against AIDS and pregnancy… So there really isn’t an excuse anymore for an unplanned pregnancy. Either people use birth control or keep their damn legs closed because in case you haven’t gotten the damn memo… having sex makes babies. Shocking, I know.
I think it is an excellent demonstration of how well Abstinence Only Sex Education manages to win the hearts and minds of the nation’s teenagers.
What really interests me is the stats on teen STD transmission rates.Anyone know those? I think they go hand in glove with the pregnancy rates…and are potentially far more harmful to society than a few more kids might be. HIV/AIDS in most of the world is primarily a HETEROSEXUAL disease. And it can become that in the West too, if we don’t educate our kids to protect themselves from it.
Abstinence-only at its finest.
Once again, conservative apologists are playing the race-card again due to NM and Mississippi having high minority populations; nevermind the fact that these states generally have high rates of poverty overall. Even poor whites in Appalachia and in the Deep South have higher than average teen birth rates.