Posted on Mon, Sep. 8, 2008
The pregnancy of Sarah Palin's unmarried 17-year-old daughter is a private matter and ought to be kept that way. But that doesn't mean America should shy away from a needed discussion of teenage pregnancy.
The United States has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the developed world, with 450,000 teens giving birth annually.
One out of three American girls gets pregnant by age 20.
After giving birth, many teenage mothers struggle in school and later in life - along with their children, often living in poverty.
Only 40 percent are likely to finish high school, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unwanted Pregnancy. A study by the group found that pregnant teens cost taxpayers at least $9.1 billion annually, including for health care, foster care and incarceration.
In Pennsylvania, children born to teenage mothers cost taxpayers $68 million in public health care (Medicaid and SCHIP), $168 million for child welfare, $87 million for incarceration, and $93 million in lost tax revenue (due to decreased earnings and spending).
Those figures for New Jersey were $47 million for public health care, $50 million for child welfare, $57 million for incarceration, and $46 million in lost tax revenue.
You can see why teenage pregnancy isn't just a family affair.
After declining for more than a decade, the teenage pregnancy rate in the United States rose 3 percent in 2006, according to the most recent data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Experts are unsure why the numbers rose, or whether the increase represents an alarming trend.
Nevertheless, the overall statistics are startling, especially when coupled with the realities that teenage mothers face.
Many are low-income and are raising their children with little support from their families or the child's father.
Most pregnant teenagers - about 80 percent - are not married and don't expect to marry the child's father. Bristol Palin is planning to marry her child's father. But many question whether marriage is a smart move for teens, who may find that it only compounds problems associated with becoming parents at a young age.
The odds are overwhelmingly against teenage marriages, which studies show are two to three times more likely to end in divorce within 10 years.
Bristol Palin's pregnancy also raises anew questions about whether abstinence-only sex education should be taught in schools - a stance favored by her mother. The first-term Alaska governor also opposes abortion in most cases, including rape and incest.
It's been proven that abstinence-only programs are largely ineffective in combating teenage pregnancies. Teenagers need comprehensive sex education that includes all available options, including abstinence.
A disturbing national study released earlier this year found that one in four girls and young women in America is infected with at least one of four common sexually transmitted diseases.
The diseases monitored in the study were human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, genital herpes and trichomoniasis, a common parasite. The first national study of these diseases found that 15 percent of the infected girls had more than one sexually transmitted infection.
The CDC estimates that 19 million new sexually transmitted infections occur in the United States each year, costing the nation's health-care system $15.3 billion annually.
Researchers estimate that 3.2 million teenage girls are among those infected with an STD.
You can leave Bristol Palin's name out of it, but clearly this country could use a discussion of teen sex and its consequences - both pregnancy and disease. Policies affecting teen pregnancy emanate out of the White House. The contenders for president need to be talking about it.
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