Posted on 12/22/2003 12:36:20 PM PST by Holly_P
ANTHONY, N.M. - The Gadsden Independent School District says 66 students are pregnant - most of them younger than age 15 and two of them still in elementary school.
Young girls getting pregnant is nothing new, but the problem appears to be increasing, said Sue Gowing, a nurse with La Clinica de Familia who splits her time between the district's two high school clinics.
Forty of the pregnant girls this year are freshmen, seven are in middle school and two are in elementary school. Sixth-grade is elementary school in the Gadsden district.
Last year 74 pregnancies were reported at Gadsden High School; 20 were reported at Santa Teresa High School.
New Mexico has the fifth highest teenage birth rate in the country, with nearly 5,000 babies born to teenagers each year. About one-third of all families in New Mexico begin with a birth to a teenage mother. Dona Ana County had the fifth-highest teenage pregnancy rate in New Mexico last year.
Last year La Clinica and Gadsden's school-based health clinics proposed making contraceptives available in school clinics. The idea probably will come before the school board early next year.
Gowing said the availability of condoms or birth control pills in school clinics would be a Band-Aid to the problem. However, she said it would help teens who want contraception but have difficulty getting it because of a lack of transportation.
Santa Fe Public Schools began dispensing contraception to students at school-based health clinics years ago after health staff discovered some students, mostly younger ones, were not picking up free birth control pills from county health offices, said Robert Benon, a family nurse practitioner at the Teen Health Centers in Santa Fe high schools.
Santa Fe health workers approached the district about providing birth control pills at high school clinics. Pills are now available, but only after discussions of abstinence and sexually transmitted disease, Benon said.
The rate of pregnancy at Santa Fe high schools dropped about 36 percent between 1997 and 2001, according to a recent report. Benon said the national teen pregnancy rate dropped about 9 percent over the period.
Noemi Loera, 18, who began pregnant at 15, is not sure easier access to birth control would have made a difference to hear.
"I'm not sure if anything would have helped," she said during a Gadsden High School class offered to teen parents.
Loera said she thought becoming pregnant would help keep her boyfriend, but he disappeared soon afterward.
She also said no one ever talked to her about sex until after she was pregnant.
School health officials hear that complaint when discussing abstinence, protection against unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.
"They do not know basic stuff about their bodies," said Colleen Runyan, head nurse at Gadsden High School's clinic.
"Lack of knowledge coupled with a majority of students having their first sexual encounter at 12 is a dangerous mix. The typical teenager, they don't think it can happen to them," she said.
Oh, I dont' know about that. My 14-y/o stepdaughter is slender and has more raging hormones than any one child should have, and she's been that way since she was 12. Since the state won't let me lock her in a closet until she's 21, I guess I need to start knitting a layette.
The harvest of modern liberalism. The modern liberal oligarchy has introduced the concept of the "hyperactive birth canal" to their proletarian camp followers.
That would be a clinic in America with a Spanish title. Hmmmmmm. I wonder if there's any connection between the Mexicanization of this area and the increase in recorded teenage pregnancies.
Of course, even asking that question must mean I'm some sort of bigot.
Unbelievable, free pills, years ago? Obviously, they need government nurses to go out to all the student’s homes, daily, to be sure the little ones take their free pills. There is the problem, they forget to take their pills. (/sarcasm)
No doubt about it ---- the school is mostly Mexican or the kids born to Mexicans --- you probably couldn't find 5% non-hispanics in this school. Very high levels of welfare useage ---- and to become generational for many years into the future.
This reasoning is a lot older than I am.
Dumb idea, Loera.
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