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Texas teen pregnancy problem

Give the alarming number of teen pregnancies in Texas, and Texas cities’ high rankings for repeat pregnancies among teens, what, if anything, would you recommend the state do to better tackle the problem?

Texas’ teen pregnancy problem

Here are their responses:

* Keven Ann Willey, Editor of the editorial page:

The state should make it easier for teens to obtain contraception, particularly teens who are already parents themselves. I’m all for abstinence-based sex ed, but abstinence shouldn’t be the only message taught. For too many teens, for a variety of reasons, that message isn’t working.

* Sharon Grigsby, Deputy editorial page editor:

In regard to “repeat pregnancies” among teens (Texas has the hightest repeat rate in the nation and Dallas is number one in repeat rate), the first step is to adjust guidelines to make it easier for teen mothers to obtain prescription birth control from clinics on contract with the state health department. Beyond that, I liked the idea, mentioned in a recent news story, of how the Dallas YWCA and Parkland manage a program, called the Nurse-Family Partnership, that has been successful in avoiding repeat teen births. It’s about to begin providing regular home visits by a nurse to 400 first-time, low-income mothers, and according to an advocate, “It’s about ensuring that the next births are spread out so the family can get on their feet, get off welfare, get employed, get their education.”

* Michael Landauer, Assistant editorial page editor:

I’m not sure how alarming it is, to be honest. Over the past two decades, the birthrate has dropped about 20 percent in Texas (more nationally). The repeat births ranking is troubling, but 64 percent of those births were to mothers 18 or older, and 20 percent of them were married. I think it’s a cultural shift in Texas that single-motherhood is more acceptable than it was before. That’s what bothers me; not the sheer numbers, but the glorification of single-motherhood. It should not be an aspiration for young girls. That said, I don’t see much of a role for the state in changing that. The state should require comprehensive sex ed instead of leaving it up to districts, but most teen births happen in urban districts that already teach comprehensive sex ed. It’s a myth that they teach “abstinence only.” The only law dealing with this subject says that you have to tell students that all forms of birth control are less effective than abstinence, and that is true. I’m more troubled than alarmed, and the source of my concern is not the state or its policies.

* Nicole Stockdale, Points editor:

First, the state must end its policy against requiring parental permission for teens seeking birth control at family planning clinics on contract with the state health department.

Then, it’s again time to tackle the curriculum. Many Texans make a big deal that the state requires us to teach “abstinence-plus,” not the much-maligned “abstinence-only.” But, as Texas Monthly reported in March, 94 percent of Texas students receive abstinence-only education. Ninety-four percent. Why? The Texas Montly report offered two reason, which make sense to me: First, there’s plenty of federal abstinence-education money available; it’s the cheaper option. Two, it’s also the safer option. Superintendents are much more likely to face a firing squad after providing comprehensive sex education than they are for providing the safe abstinence-only education. (Read a summary of the report this story was based on, from the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund, here in PDF form.

The problem is more than a lack of information — it’s a lack of the right information. Sex education needs to focus on smart behavior, dealing with peer pressure, etc. — not solely on how terrible sex is and how fallible condoms are.

* Rod Dreher, Editorial columnist:

I don’t think there’s much of anything the state can do to tackle the problem. More sex education? Is it really the case that teenagers are getting pregnant because they don’t know how sex works? It’s not 1950, you know, and I think it’s safe to say that girls on their second baby know how it got there. The fact is, nobody has been able to demonstrate that sex education of any kind - abstinence or its opposite - works to a significant degree. People on the left and the right both have ideological positions to defend, which I understand (I have my own), but that doesn’t mean either model works in practice. Anyway, in Dallas at least, most of the repeat birth rates were to 18 or 19 year old women, who presumably have already left high school.

I think the significant number in the report was that the Dallas repeat birth rates broke down like this: 64 percent to Hispanics, 30 percent to blacks, 6 percent to whites. If this is a problem that can be solved with more sex education, you would expect the birthrates broken down by racial demographic to be much closer. After all, if a lack of information is responsible for these stats, surely it’s not the case that white kids are getting dramatically more sex-ed information than minorities. The answer has to do with culture, including socio-economic status. But poverty can’t be the entire story either, because it’s not the case that only six percent of white people in Dallas are poor. I don’t know what cultural factors are to blame here, though I’m sure immigrant status has a lot to do with it. I remember growing up in my small Southern town in the 1970s and 1980s, teen births were far more common among the black community than the white community (half the town was black, and half white). The taboo against unwed motherhood was strong in the white community, except among the poorest whites. Not so among the black community. What you permit, you encourage. Nowadays, that taboo among whites has begun to recede; unsurprisingly, the white illegitimacy rate is today where it was for African-Americans in the early 1960s, before it went off the charts.

I don’t know what the answer is. But I do know that the state can do very little. Churches and community leaders are far more powerful combating this problem.

* Colleen McCain Nelson, Editorial writer:

The state should take a hard look at the road blocks it puts up to prevent minors from accessing birth control and at Texas’ abstinence-focused approach to sex education. Our state seems to be in sync with Utah — and out of step with the rest of the country — when it comes to allowing teens to access contraceptives at state-funded clinics without their parents’ consent. Texas is one of four states that doesn’t allow the Children’s Health Insurance Program to offer birth control. Most disturbing is the fact that teens who have already given birth still need their parents’ permission to get birth control at many clinics.

If our goals are to help teens make smart, informed decisions and to prevent teen pregnancies — and I hope that these are our objectives — then Texas’ strategy isn’t working. State laws must be changed to give kids more information and more access to birth control. State Sen. Dan Patrick says in Sunday’s news story that we need more parenting — not more contraceptives. That’s true, and ideally, parents would rise to the challenge. But wishing that parents would do a better job doesn’t qualify as sound public policy. And hoping that this failed strategy suddenly becomes a winner isn’t likely to knock us from our perch atop the teen pregnancy rankings.

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