Last night I inadvertently stumbled upon another blue/red divide.
It was a slow news day, so I took the opportunity to do a little research for an abstinence related post I was working on. It ended up taking on a life of its own, and the result was this. I was curious which states produced the most teen parents, and once I compiled the list, I saw red. A lot of red. Well, just look:
Number of Teen Parents (per 1,000 girls 15-19) by State
(Clicking image will bring you to my site where I have a larger, cleaner version. I didn't post that one here for bandwidth reasons.)
All I can say is "wow." (Actually, I can say more, and I do below the jump.)
I didn't intend to bash red states when I started down this road. Since the $388 billion spending bill was approved, much has been said about abstinence-only programs. From advocates of these programs, there's been a series of irresponsible and misleading statements, and that was before we learned how dangerously flawed the programs themselves are. I set out to find some simple statistics which would further debunk their arguments. (Which is not to say I set out to prove abstinence-only does not work - that would be like proving water is wet.) This table, no matter how striking it is, does not show abstinence-only is a failure, but man if it doesn't speak volumes. While there's no easy solution for teen pregnancies, perhaps it's time the folks in red states elect officials who will tackle the tough issues at home.
Data pulled from CDC report available in a pdf here.