Doctors: Trump change could lead to more teen pregnancies
By Lizzie Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle
High school students toting both textbooks and newborns are becoming increasingly rare. But a Trump administration proposal to rewrite federal birth control mandates could soon change that, some medical experts fear.
The teenage birth rate in the United States has hit an all-time low after nearly three decades of decreases, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show. The number of 15- to 19-year-olds who gave birth in 2016 was down 9 percent from the year before, to 20.3 births per 1,000 women. Since 1991, the rate has plummeted by 67 percent, the biggest drop since the CDC began tracking the data nearly eight decades ago.
More than half of teens have had sex by age 18, the CDC found — a rate that’s down a bit from the early 1990s, but not nearly as sharply as the number of births. Medical professionals and policy experts say increased contraception use has contributed to the decline in teenage motherhood.
