Teenage pregnancy has been common for hundreds of years. Teenagers in the 1500 's were expected to marry and give birth to a son as young as 16 years old. Many young girls died while giving birth, as well as their children. The teen pregnancy rate peaked in 1957 with 97 per 1,000 teens getting pregnant. Over the past 40 years, the teenage pregnancy rate in the United States is at an all-time low. (HubPages.com) Even with this drastic decrease, our country still has the highest pregnancy rate than all other industrialized countries. Russia has the second highest teen pregnancy rate, but a girl in America is almost 25% more likely to get pregnant than a girl in Russia. (pubs.aeaweb.org) Almost 75,000 teenagers become pregnant each year, with over 80% of those pregnancies unintended. (plannedparenthood.org) The percentage is so high because teenagers are uneducated about sex. The reason for the decrease in the birth rates in teenagers is education in schools, and communication between parents and their children.
We need to decrease the pregnancy rate because there are many emotional and physical complications that come with pregnancy. Teenage girls are 93% more likely than fully developed adult women to give birth prematurely. (telegraph.co.uk) Premature births can …show more content…
He recorded the teen pregnancy rate in 50 schools that only taught abstinence only classes, one school for each state. He also calculated the teen pregnancy rate in 50 schools that taught comprehensive sex education classes, in all 50 states. He recorded the pregnancy rate in the schools every year for 10 years. After recording his data at the end of the 10 years, 2/3 of the schools that comprehensive sex education classes had a lower teen pregnancy rate than the schools that taught abstinence only