Teenage pregnancy rates have dropped to the lowest levels ever recorded in the 73 years that the government started collecting data.
The reason for this dramatic decrease?
Not a decrease in teenage sexual activity. Those levels have remained stable for the past two decades.
Not abortions. Those rates have been flat for the past 15 years.
The decrease in teen pregnancy is the result of increased contraception use.
Speaking to NBC News, Dr. John Santelli, a professor of population and family health at Columbia University, attributed the change to a greater emphasis on getting effective contraception to teens, especially long-acting methods like the IUD.
Just think:
No rise in teenage sexual activity. No rise in abortions. Yet historically low levels of teenage pregnancy.
It’s practically a miracle.
Except it’s not. It’s just contraception, which has resulted in fewer unwanted pregnancies (and the resulting economic devastation) without any other significant changes in teenage behavior.
But if you’d listen to some, the idea that teenagers have better access to contraception and are using contraception in greater numbers signals the end of days. The four horsemen of the apocalypse. The crumbling of the very bedrock of our society.
God must be so angry about this.
I’m not as concerned about the link between contraception use and God’s wrath. but then again, I am not a right-wing, religious ultra-conservative who believes that abstinence (and the inevitable pregnancies) is the only acceptable form of contraception, and that any other use of contraception prior to marriage (or even thereafter) will send you straight to hell.
And don’t fool yourself. There are a lot of these people out there.
For them, the news that teenage contraception use has increased (and teen pregnancy has dramatically decreased) without an increase in abortion or even sexual activity must be devastating.
I love news that makes crazy people crazy.
