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Do More Say No?

Conflicting Claims on Teen Pregnancy/Abortion Rates

By Robert Kumpel

Probably the only issue where pro-life and "pro-choice" groups agree with each other is the issue of teen pregnancy -- and the area of agreement is extremely narrow: Both sides would like to see it reduced.

If the statistics are accurate, both sides can claim reason to celebrate. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the rate of teen pregnancies in the United States has dropped 17 percent, from 117 pregnancies per 1000 females ages, 15-19 in 1990, to 97 pregnanacies per 1000 females, ages 15-19. Further, the rate of abortion has declined as well, though the results are less dramatic. In 1996, the United States abortion rate was 31.4 per 100 live births. By 1997, the rate dropped to 30.5 per 100 live births.

But before celebrating, each side must ask: why have the rates dropped? Are teenagers more abstinent or just better at using contraception? Has abortion actually dropped, or are teenagers simply finding easier ways to self-abort without consulting a doctor?

Since 1984, Mechtild "Mickie" Grothues has directed the La Habra Life Center. A mother of five, Grothues has not noticed much change. "The number of people coming to us are about the same, but people come to us who maybe don't necessarily have a crisis pregnancy. There might be a small decrease. I think our efforts to educate the larger population are paying off, in addition to prayer; but I don't necessarily think more people are using birth control. I think people are more aware. In one way, I'm really touched by the young people -- I think they are more aware. I'm surprised by the number of young people who say, 'No I don't want an abortion -- that's wrong.' I think it's deeper. I see it when I go into the schools. I think they are more aware that abortion is killing a child and they don't really like it. We also see more women who have had an abortion who are now hurting, and I think the word gets around on that, too.

"I feel the people who are taking birth control," continued Grothues, "they are more pushed to it -- they are not educated about what birth control and birth control pills do, especially depo-provera shots. I have a feeling they are often given to women, especially minorities, half of whom have no idea what they are. In one way, the shots may affect [the pregnancy rate] because of their long-term effects; you can get pregnant two or three months later after you stop using birth control pills, but with these shots, it can take a whole year. I have no idea if that explains it or not, but my gut feeling is that people are more aware of what's going on. When they are educated on the abortion issue, they don't like abortion."

Roxanne Hunter has been Temecula Valley High School's nurse since the school's opening in 1984. Located in an upper-middle class Riverside County neighborhood, the school's student population is nearing 3000. Hunter doesn't see a lot of pregnant students. "As far as abortions, I don't really get involved with the kids who have abortions," she said. "They may come to me after the fact for medical care, like bleeding and pain. I've probably seen fewer abortions in the last couple of years than when I first started. It's hard to comment on the number of pregnancies, because there's no one person that the kids come to. If a kid's pregnant, they may go to their counselor, and the counselor doesn't always send them to me. Most of the counselors are pretty good about sending all kids to me who are pregnant, but then we have the issue of the teachers. If a kid goes to a teacher, that teacher may refer the kid or not do anything.

"We are certainly having more girls staying in school who are pregnant," said Hunter, "but I don't necessarily think there's been an increase in teen pregnancy at this school. It might be because of more education at home. Too, the state mandates that in ninth or tenth grade all kids get educated regarding HIV, and I believe the education refers to pregnancy, so maybe the education accounts for it. I certainly encourage kids to talk to their moms about these types of issues."

At Santa Margarita Catholic High School in Mission Viejo, school nurse Keri Graper believes the number of teen pregnancies has dropped, but not necessarily because of a drop in sexual activity. "Of those [pregnancies] that we have had," said Graper, "it's dropped by about half. There were about two last year and one this year. I really can't tell you why. I hope it's education, but I'm more realistic than that. Birth control is a possible reason, but we don't hear about that. We know it's happening, but they don't tell us because it's against the tenets of the Catholic Church. I hate to speak for the school on matters like this because I'm not Catholic." Graper has no opinion about the number of abortions. "We also don't hear about that," she said.

Deni Robie is the vice-president of communications and marketing for Planned Parenthood's Los Angeles headquarters. Robie believes that one needs to take the decline in the rates of teen pregnancy and abortions "with a grain of salt, because," she said, "we have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country. I don't know why -- I'm not from California and I've only lived here about four years. I can tell you a lot about why I think it's declining, which is a lot better access to information, including education in schools. First, there are fewer teens having sex... not a lot, it's like two or three percent lower. That has to do with more sex education. If you just leave kids on their own right now, the only information on sex they are getting is through the media -- Budweiser commercials, Beverly Hills 90201, things like that. Ideally, if you have parents who will at least talk to their kids, even if they're not really comfortable talking about sex, then the kids can balance the two. But if you don't have parents doing that, then they're left to navigate on their own. When you get sex education in the schools, that can be helpful as well.

"Here in California, we also have one of the best state-funded programs for low-income people, which includes most teenagers," said Robie. The state of California spends an exorbitant amount of money -- it's not exorbitant, it's actually wonderful -- they fund your basic women's health care, reproductive health care for low-income women -- and that includes teenagers, because they feel that they can't tell their parents or they don't have their parents' insurance or they don't have financial help."

Do "reproductive health services" funded by the state include abortion? "They do," said Robie. "In California, we've made access to birth control very available and the state just received millions of dollars from the federal government for lowering teen pregnancy without raising the teen pregnancy rate. I think a great part of the decline in abortions is because of better use of contraception [among teenagers]. That's a nice little side effect of AIDS awareness, that a lot more of them are using condoms. Then again, that goes back to sex education and the access to birth control."

Deborah Rodriguez has worked as a crisis-pregnancy counselor at Grace Elliot Medical Center in Compton since 1998. Her view of teen pregnancy is much grimmer than Robie's: "It has not declined -- at least from what I've seen here. I think there's still a lot we need to do to get to the teenagers, so that they know that the best way of not getting pregnant is not by using a condom, but by abstaining from sex." She also believes that the rate of abortion hasn't changed noticeably either: "We still have it very rampant here. I don't think it's gone down. If it has, it's gone down very little. So many of them say, 'we wanna get rid of our problem and the best way is to have an abortion.' Our teenagers need to know that there are other ways than having abortions. Then, also, they don't know what possible outcomes could come of abortion. They [parents and schools] don't let them know all the problems that you're going to have in the years to come and the months afterward. If they did, I don't think we'd have as many young people getting abortions."

Suzanne Genit, executive director of the Pregnancy Help Clinics of Glendale and Hollywood, sees very little change in the number of teen pregnancies. "According to our statistical file for the year ending last year, I can't see any difference one way or the other," said Genit. Our biggest change has come in advertising. We're affiliated with a national organization called CareNet, and they put up billboards with messages like, 'If you're pregnant or need a pregnancy test' and gives an 800 number. When those go up, we seem to have more clients; but other than that, I have not been able to tell on any level that we've had less or more teenage clients. With regard to abortion, just about everyone we see is considering abortion, so it's hard to say. I don't see that fewer women are getting abortions. I see that there's maybe a little more awareness about it. But the drop has been so minimal that it certainly has not been reflected on the level of our day to day ministry."

Dave Pollock, executive director of the San Fernando Crisis Pregnancy Center, is more hopeful about teen pregnancies: "We believe there has been a drop, and we base that on the number of clients that we see. We're not cutting back. We're in more public schools with the abstinence message than we've ever been before. We have more advertising out there with billboards and 800 numbers, and so forth, and we are seeing a drop in the count."

The drop "could be for a couple of reasons," said Pollock. "It could be that women have already made their minds up that they are going to abort -- but I don't think that. I tend to think that the teen pregnancy rate has dropped. After all, when you go into nine or ten public high schools multiple times during the year, talking about 100 percent abstinence, and then the teen pregnancy rate drops, the A equals B here, but nobody wants to admit it. You don't see in the press the effect that abstinence programs are having, but they're very effective. Teachers welcome us. The students, particularly the girls, really appreciate the fact that we're giving them refusal skills, giving them scientific and medical reasons why they can say 'no' without being laughed at. Too, more young people have reasons to say 'no' now because of the moral reasons.

"If sexual activity is dropping," Pollock continued, "then pregnancies are dropping, and if pregnancies are dropping, then the abortion rates are dropping. I also think that there is a little more information out there now about abortion. Also there are crisis pregnancy centers -- our national affiliate [CareNet] alone has 500 centers. I know there's another affiliate who has 500. We're talking two to three thousand crisis pregnancy centers out there in the United States. If young women choose to carry, somebody's there to help them."

Ruth Rozak has spent 24 years helping pregnant teenagers. As the director of counseling at the Life Center of Santa Ana for the last eighteen years, she is more than familiar with the problem of teenagers in crisis: "More than I want to be sometimes!" Like Pollock, Rozak has noticed a drop and is hopeful that the reasons indicate a return to abstinence. "I think there has been a drop," she said. "I wouldn't call it an avalanche, but I do believe it. I do the statistics by age as well as by other factors and they have somewhat dropped, though we need to find out why they're dropping. Kids are using more discretion [about sexual activity], thinking twice about whether they want to take the risk. There's probably also some people who would say the drop is because of birth control, but from my experience, the use of birth control has probably been about the same with kids for all the time that I've been here -- half do, and half don't, use it."

Likewise, Rozak said she has "noticed a decline in young girls getting abortions. There could be a lot of reasons for that. One could be that they are just more facile at getting to clinics, so they wouldn't get to our office and we don't see as much. But for the number of people who come here to state their intentions as 'abortion,' especially in the age group below 25, I have noticed a decline for the past five years. It just doesn't have the same level of desirability as it had five or ten years ago. I think that some kids are looking at their lives a little differently. They're looking at some of the values that have been going around a little differently.

"Unfortunately, on the other hand, there's a lot of very callous behavior too that is going on at the same time, where abortion is nothing at all. It's kind of an odd society that we're in right now. We have a lot of young people looking at life differently, but the others seem to be more turned off and more hostile. You'll have kids who are more religious in some ways, but others who are so destructive. It's very strange world."

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