Overall, rates of reproductive coercion among family-planning-clinic patients are suprisingly high: about one in five women report their partner having attempted to coerce them into pregnancy. “What we’re seeing is that, in the larger scheme of violence against women and girls, it is another way to maintain control,” says Miller, who studied 1,300 female patients culled from five family-planning clinics in Northern California. “You have guys telling their partners, ‘I can do this because I’m in control’ or ‘I want to know that I can have you forever.’ ” This may help explain previous findings of higher rates of unintended pregnancies in relationships with partner violence.

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The overall teen pregnancy rate was up 3 percent in 2006, with a 4 percent rise in the rate of births and a 1 percent rise in the rate of abortions, according to the report by the Guttmacher Institute.

The United States has higher rates of teen pregnancy, birth and abortion than in other Western industrialized countries.

There were 71 pregnancies per 1,000 U.S. girls aged 15-19. In 2006, 7 percent of all teenage girls got pregnant, according to the report.

The overall teen pregnancy rate was up 3 percent in 2006, with a 4 percent rise in the rate of births and a 1 percent rise in the rate of abortions, according to the report by the Guttmacher Institute.

The United States has higher rates of teen pregnancy, birth and abortion than in other Western industrialized countries.

There were 71 pregnancies per 1,000 U.S. girls aged 15-19. In 2006, 7 percent of all teenage girls got pregnant, according to the report.

The article also looks at the correlation between the rising rates of teen pregnancies and the emphasis of Federal Government to fund abstinence only programs.

In a report published online in the December 21, 2009 edition of Pediatrics more than 4.3 million U.S. births were recorded for the year 2007, a 1 percent increase over the previous year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, teen births are up for the second year in a row, births among unmarried women are rising, and the infant mortality rate remains higher than in many other countries, including France and Japan.

Highlights of the report include:

* The teen birth rate rose about 1 percent, to 42.5 births per 1000 teenagers
* Births to women aged 15 to 44 went up 1 percent, to 69.5 births per 1000 women
* Births to unmarried women in all ethnic/racial groups rose about 1 percent, to 39.7 percent
* Cesarean deliveries rose 2 percent, to 31.8 percent of all births
* The rate of multiple births did not change
* Pre-term births declined 1 percent, to 12.7 percent
* The rate of low-birth-weight infants fell to 8.2 percent
* The infant mortality rate was 6.77 deaths per 1000 live births
* Life expectancy at birth reached a record high of 77.9 years
* Death rates for children age 1 to 19 fell 2.5 percent
* Leading causes of death to children and adolescents were unintentional injuries and homicide

Called “College Bound Sisters,” it began in 1997 as the health department in Guilford County worked to combat a high rate of teen pregnancy. They initially targeted girls aged 12-16 whose sisters were teenaged mothers.

“When I was doing maternity nursing,” Dr. Hazel Brown of the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina–Greensboro and the program’s co-founder said, “the girls would always say, ‘It hasn’t been such a big deal in my family, because my sister already had a baby.’”

They eventually came up with the idea to give money to the girls for college — a dollar a day for every day they were in the program. In addition to money, the girls learn about fellowship, goal-setting, age-appropriate sexual education and getting into college.

Link to the original story.

Sex education programs that advise students to delay sexual activity while also offering instruction on ways to avoid unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections effectively reduce risky sexual behavior, increase condom use and decrease spread of STIs.

While the report concluded there was not enough information to determine the effectiveness of “abstinence only” education, advocates for more comprehensive sex education weighed in:

James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth said, “At long last, evidence and common sense have returned to public health policy,” adding that the report “endorses the comprehensive approach to prevention that includes condoms and birth control.” Wagoner said, “We should be spending taxpayer dollars only on evidence-based programs.” Sarah Brown of the National Campaign To Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy said, “Most Americans would like their teens to stay away from sex,” adding, “Strong research shows that the best way to do this, especially in schools, is to use a curriculum that encourages teens to delay sex and also — this is the key — talks to them about family planning and protection.”

The National Partnership for Women and Families post also cited a recent report from the Washington Post.

Washington, D.C., officials are planning to make testing for sexually transmitted infections available at all public high schools in the coming school year, adding D.C. to a growing list of cities that test students for STIs….

he new program requires all students to attend a lecture about STIs, after which they are escorted into restroom areas in groups of 15 to 20. They are then given paper bags with urine collection cups and go into the stalls, at which point they can decide whether to provide a sample. All students return the paper bags, regardless of whether they provided samples. Students give a password and can call a week later to receive their confidential results and, if necessary, treatment at the school or an STI clinic, which is paid for by the city. The district first offered the program two years ago at two charter schools, and eight high schools were included during the past school year.

Also from The Women’s Health Report, news from Boston:

Boston’s health agency on Tuesday is scheduled to launch a safer-sex campaign that reaches out to teenagers through Web sites such as Facebook and YouTube, the Boston Globe reports. The campaign was created in response to rising rates of sexually transmitted infections among young people in the city, according to the Globe. The $100,000 campaign originally was intended to address communicable diseases in general. However, experts noticed the increase in STI cases among teenagers and decided to spend all the funding on the campaign targeting STIs.

* About one-third of adolescents hadn’t received instruction on methods of birth control before age 18.
* In 2004, there were about 745,000 pregnancies among females younger than age 20. This included an estimated 16,000 pregnancies among girls aged 10 to 14.
* Syphilis cases among young people aged 15 to 24 have increased in both males and females in recent years.
* In 2006, about one million young people aged 10 to 24 were reported to have chlamydia, gonorrhea or syphilis. Nearly one-quarter of females aged 15 to 19, and 45 percent of females aged 20 to 24 had a human papillomavirus (HPV) infection during 2003-2004.
* From 1997 to 2006, rates of AIDS cases among males aged 15 to 24 increased.
* In 2006, the majority of new diagnoses of HIV infection among young people occurred among males and those aged 20 to 24.
* From 2004 to 2006, about 100,000 females aged 10 to 24 visited a hospital emergency department for nonfatal sexual assault, including 30,000 females aged 10 to 14.

The study was conducted with 166 teen girls ages 13-17 with histories of criminal behavior who had been court-mandated to receive out-of-home treatment. The girls were randomly assigned to either receive the Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC) program, which involved one-on-one care in the homes of highly trained foster parents, or the services they would have received had they not participated in the study, which was usually treatment in a group care facility.

The results were dramatic, according to lead author Kerr of OSU. About 26 percent of the girls assigned to receive the specialized Treatment Foster Care program became pregnant, compared to almost 47 percent of teens in group care.

..Obama wants to redirect funding from “abstinence-only education programs to evidence-based and promising teen pregnancy prevention programs.”

Obama wants to eliminate a $38 million state grant program plus a nearly $100 million pot of money that is supposed to be spent for abstinence education at the direction the Administration for Children and Families, part of the Health and Human Services Department.