Teen Birth Rate Rises for First Time in 15 Years

[KappaKittyCat]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

I think differences in culture may influence this decision even more that the law itself. I think if you look at abortion rates by states, you don't see a big spike in the rates of abortion of women right over the age at which they can get abortions without parent consent.

That depends on what data you're looking at. I'm interested to see your sources. Mine say differently.

Stanley Henshaw studied the impacts of Mississippi's parental consent law when it went into effect in 1993. What he found was that fewer 17-year-olds were having abortions, but more 18-year-olds were having late-term abortions: the state's second-trimester abortion rate increased by 19%. This study was published in the May-June edition of Family Planning Perspectives journal.

Ted Joyce, Robert Kaestner and Silvie Coleman studied Texas's parental notification law after it went into effect in 2000 and came to a similar conclusion. Quoting the article, the parental notification law was "associated with increased birth rates and rates of abortion during the second trimester among a subgroup of minors who were 17.50 to 17.74 years of age at the time of conception." This article was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in March 2006.

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

And going by personal experience with the couple of pregnant teens I've known, they knew where to get condoms or other forms of birth control, and they knew how people got pregnant. Some even knew from close friends exactly how difficult parenting was. That knowledge didn't information their behavior though. The fun of sex and the "it won't happen to me" thinking (as well as "it might be fun to have a kid" thinking in a couple of cases) override the formal instruction they've been giving.

I TOTALLY agree with this!

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by KappaKittyCat

That depends on what data you're looking at. I'm interested to see your sources. Mine say differently.

Stanley Henshaw studied the impacts of Mississippi's parental consent law when it went into effect in 1993. What he found was that fewer 17-year-olds were having abortions, but more 18-year-olds were having late-term abortions: the state's second-trimester abortion rate increased by 19%. This study was published in the May-June edition of Family Planning Perspectives journal.

Ted Joyce, Robert Kaestner and Silvie Coleman studied Texas's parental notification law after it went into effect in 2000 and came to a similar conclusion. Quoting the article, the parental notification law was "associated with increased birth rates and rates of abortion during the second trimester among a subgroup of minors who were 17.50 to 17.74 years of age at the time of conception." This article was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in March 2006.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/09/12/USTPstats.pdf

It could completely be my not paying enough attention, but when I looked at the most recent data by state it didn't appear that if you worked out the percentage of pregnancies ending in abortion, there was much real difference for the 15-17 vs 18-19 groups. I didn't work out the percentages; I just kind of looked at a couple of numbers. At first, it looks like a huge jump, but then your realize that that many more 18-19 year olds got pregnant to begin with.

Maybe I'm just reading it wrong or maybe the pattern that existed as the laws went into effect didn't continue very long. There's a note at the bottom of one page about estimates for a state with incomplete data perhaps being inaccurate because girls affected by parental consent laws traveled to other states for abortions. When the laws were new, girls may have waited to turn 18. Perhaps later, people advised them to go to the closest state without notification laws.

Mississippi looks like it's about 14% for 15-17 and 16% for 18-19
Texas looks like it's 15% vs. 18%.

Again, this is if I understand what there numbers represent and read the columns correctly when I scrolled down to look at the state.