Thank you galileogirl, its just a one-year uptick—and a tiny one at that.
Unfortunately, the right-wing media have jumped on it claiming that, despite a 34% decline in teen pregnancy over the past 15 years, it represents a “complete failure” of the sex-education and contraception approach to managing teen pregnancy. They are calling for a return to Abstinence Only programs, even though empirical studies have shown these to be resounding failures, insofar as they actually lower the age at first intercourse, increase sexual experimentation and pregnancy rates among teens who were exposed to them instead of conventional sex education and contraception programs.
The teen pregnancy rate has been on a steady decline since 1991, where it topped out at around 61.8 live births per 1,000 girls aged 15–19, to 40.5 in 2005—the lowest level in 65 years. This rose four-tenths of a point to 41.9 births per 1,000 in 2006. Most of this was accounted for by young teens, aged 15–17 who, as galileogirl notes, experienced an uptick from 21 to 22 live births per 1,000 teens.
Most of this uptick has occurred among Hispanic teens, who tend to be more heavily dependent on state funded family planning clinics than other ethnic groups. Also, whenever family planning clinics experience cutbacks, the first thing to go are walk-in clinic visits. This disproportionately affects young teens, who tend to have trouble making and keeping any kind of appointment. When pitted against schools and prisons, State Family Planning programs tend to get the short end of the stick in state budgets, even though it is one of the most cost effective programs going.
So, this relatively tiny increase in teen pregnancy could be explained entirely in terms of local family planning clinics responding to tighter budgets, and restricting teen’s access to contraceptive services.