Chris Mooney is a freelance writer and the author of two books, 
A 2001 Unicef report said that the United States teenage birthrate was higher than any other member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The U.S. tied Hungary for the most abortions. This was in spite of the fact that girls in the U.S. were not the most sexually active. Denmark held that title. But, its teenage birthrate was one-sixth of ours, and its teenage abortion rate was half of ours.
Look, teens everywhere are dealing with a cocktail of hormones and emotions, a changing physique, and a myriad of social pressures. And yes, many are going to have sex. Thing is, abstinence-until-marriage education leaves out some important details about health and safety, so let's make sure our kids are well informed. Early.
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Brain & Behavior
Comments
McCain would beg to differ. He seems to think sex ed sends a contradictory message.
Posted by: Miranda | September 6, 2008 12:51 PM
These seem to be decade-old numbers - from 1998. Are no newer studies available? Is the Bush administration suppressing them?
Posted by: JohnA | September 6, 2008 1:21 PM
JohnA,
There is a good deal of recent research emphasizing that sex ed works. This table was featured in today's NYTimes and serves as a good illustration that unwanted pregnancies are less about the numbers of girls having sex, and probably more the result of how we talk about it. The piece does give this figure from last year:
Expect to hear a good deal about abstinence-only education and Roe v. Wade in the next two months given the GOP candidates.
Posted by: Sheril R. Kirshenbaum | September 6, 2008 1:40 PM
Very interesting table (even with that obsolete data) and I have another argument against 'abstinence-until-marriage education' - abortion rate in exUSSR before and after late 80-th.
There were no sexual education programs in USSR, no Playboy magazine and homosexualism was a crime. But abortion rate was significantly higher!
Posted by: Free Researcher | September 8, 2008 8:59 AM
When I saw this in Charles Blow's NY Times column, my first though was that there are at least two continents missing or are these just stats on predominantly white and asian nations? Where are African, South American, Russia, Mexico and Middle Eastern stats? Alphabetically it appears half the list is missing, except that the U.S. has been moved to the top of the list.
Posted by: Karen | September 8, 2008 12:33 PM
Actually, the most interesting thing in these tables is the dramatic drop in births to women under 20 in countries like Austria, Germany, Korea, etc. between 1970 and 1998. I can't really judge from the chart whether these drops represent a change in the average age at marriage (births to women under 20 is hardly identical to unplanned pregnancies), an increase in use of contraception, or the overall drop in childbirth rates particularly in Europe relative to the United States.
Posted by: Jinchi | September 14, 2008 2:24 AM