Posted on 12/23/2003 10:51:49 AM PST by CedarDave
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
66 Teens in School District Pregnant
By Rene Romo
Journal Southern Bureau
LAS CRUCES— Southern Doña Ana County school officials who have gotten used to high teen pregnancy rates are seeing another trend this year: pregnancies among even younger teens.
Halfway through the school year, 66 pregnant girls have been seen by two school-based health clinics serving the county's Gadsden Independent School District. Nearly three-fourths of the students were younger than 15.
Forty of the young mothers were high school freshmen, seven are middle school students and two were in elementary school, which ends here with the sixth grade.
"More of the pregnancies this year are younger girls," said Sue Gowing, a physician's assistant and nurse for La Clinica de Familia Inc., a private group that provides student health services under contract to Gadsden.
In all of the past academic year, 94 teen mothers sought prenatal care at health clinics at Gadsden High School and Santa Teresa High School, Gowing said. In contrast to the current trend, only one pregnant teen younger than high school age— a 12-year-old— reported to the school-based clinics last year, Gowing said.
''The age distribution (among pregnant teens) last year was more evenly spaced over all four years of high school," Gowing said. "There was no grade level that seemed to stand out last year. We saw pregnancies from freshmen to senior, but not the big jump we've seen this year in that freshman class.''
The reasons for the spike in pregnancies among younger teens is unknown. Meanwhile, Gowing noted that the district's numbers might not account for all pregnant teens in the area because some might have sought prenatal care somewhere else.
Most studies of teen pregnancy rates focus on women 15 to 19 years old, so those younger than 15 usually are off the radar, said Sylvia Ruiz, executive director of the Albuquerque-based New Mexico Teen Pregnancy Coalition.
''We know that girls are getting pregnant younger, but the context we don't know,'' Ruiz said.
New Mexico, where more than 4,500 teens gave birth last year, has long grappled with a high teen pregnancy rate. The state has the fourth highest teen birth rate in the nation, according to the Teen Pregnancy Coalition.
Childbearing by teenagers increases the risk that children will be raised in poverty because early parenthood often limits the educational opportunities of the parents.
One New Mexico teen birth rate statistic— 43 births for every 1,000 females ages 15 to 17 years old— was 48 percent over the national average, according to New Mexico Voices for Children, a child-advocacy group. The national average for teen births in 2001 in the same age was 29 births per 1,000 women.
''Quite alarming, isn't it?'' said David Garcia, secretary of the Gadsden Independent school board, when asked about the number of very young pregnant teens in the district.
Health professionals in the Gadsden district, which includes the communities of Sunland Park, Santa Teresa, Anthony and Chaparral, have asked the school board over the past year to allow La Clinica nurses to dispense contraceptives to students, upon request, during visits to the two school-based health clinics.
So far, a policy change hasn't been formally presented to the board. The policy change was proposed along with a comprehensive health education program.
Gowing said nursing staff can write prescriptions to young women for contraceptive pills, but the girls have to visit a La Clinica site off-campus to pick them up. While young men can purchase prophylactics at stores, they are often hesitant to do so, she said.
''None of us are naive enough to think that that (dispensing contraceptives at clinics) is the whole answer,'' Gowing said. ''Teen pregnancy is a multifaceted issue, and contraceptives are just part of the answer. But for teens who are wanting to be responsible, we can take a roadblock out of their way.''
While Garcia said he prefers a health education program that stresses abstinence, he said he wasn't opposed to allowing students to obtain contraceptives upon request from health professionals.
''Kids will have that drive to engage in sex, and we might as well teach them to be responsible, because everything comes with responsibilities,'' Garcia said.
Other ideas that emerged at a recent school board meeting included creating parental support groups to help adults talk to their children about responsible sexual behavior and having teen parents talk to other students thinking of having sex.
Copyright 2003 Albuquerque Journal
''None of us are naive enough to think that that (dispensing contraceptives at clinics) is the whole answer,'' Gowing said. ''Teen pregnancy is a multifaceted issue, and contraceptives are just part of the answer. But for teens who are wanting to be responsible, we can take a roadblock out of their way.''
Amazing thinking, isn't it. A "responisible" teen is one who obtains contraceptives.
That's really horrible. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that girls are developing earlier than they used to--my wife teaches elementary school, and knows of a number of 2nd grade girls who have started menstruation, and who wear bras. Nevertheless, pregnancy in elementary school is definitely not a good thing.
Women in the past had few choices when they had children out of wedlock. If they had the financial wherewithal to support it, excepting the societal approbrium that was applied, it wasn't a problem. Otherwise, the child would go into an orphanage or end up being adopted. Girls and women were aware of these consequences. Now that no longer applies. Is it any surprise that the out of wedlock birthrate and single woman headed households have exploded over the last sixty years?
I was thinking that many of those pregancies might have been aborted in earlier years. But the nation seems less tolerant of abortions than it used to, and that's a good thing.
The other factor is the continuing lowering of morals on TV and movies. You show a kid 14 years of shows and movies where everyone sleeps together out of wedlock and then we're surprised when the kids try it out at 14.
I know of one boy who had gotten 21 girls preggers -- and then he turned 16. How is he going to pay?
Ummmm.... They are having sex. That isn't known?
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