Teen Pregnancies and Abortions Down in Canada
Last month, the Trono Globe and Mail reported that teens are still having as much sex as they ever had, but that teen pregnancies and teen abortions have declined dramatically.
The number of unwanted pregnancies among adolescents and young adults has fallen principally because they are using birth control, said Alex McKay, research co-ordinator at the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada, and author of the study.I have to wonder how much of a role welfare reform played in these trends. If teens knew that raising infants on welfare would not be easy, it must have deterred some of them from becoming pregnant.
"It's due to greater contraceptive use, not teens having less sex," he said.
... The research, published in today's edition of The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, shows that the teen pregnancy rate in Canada fell to 32.1 per 100,000 population in 2003 from 53.9 per 100,000 in 1974.
During the same period, the teen abortion rate increased to 17.1 per 100,000 from 13.9 per 100,000. However, the number of teens having abortions has fallen steadily since 1994.
Category: Canadian Affairs, Economics, Health and Medicine Posted on
Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 5:22pm
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