Respect Waits

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Premature parenthood is more than a 9-month interruption in a youth's life. Rather, it can further complicate a life that is already deficient in promise, hope, and dreams for the future.

The costs of teen pregnancy are staggering. Teen mothers are less likely to complete high school, less likely to get married, and more likely to go on welfare than their peers. A young woman who has a child before graduating from high school is less likely to complete school than a young woman who does not have a child.

The odds are stacked against the children of teen parents from the minute they are born. Their health is poorer, their cognitive development is slower, and their behavioral problems are worse than their peers. Teen pregnancy robs teens of their childhood and their futures as productive adults. It robs their children, and their children's children. (1)

Most teen pregnancies are unintended. Each year, about 200,000 teens, aged 17 and younger, have children. Their babies are often low birth weight and have disproportionately high infant mortality rates. About 80 percent of the children born to unmarried teenagers who dropped out of high school are poor. (2)

Contraceptives are far less effective for teens and young adults than for older users. Among sexually active teenage girls aged 12 to 18, 20% of oral contraceptive users became pregnant over a mere six months. (3)

Waiting until marriage is the only way to guarantee truly "Safe Sex".

Contraceptive Use

• A sexually active teenager who does not use contraceptives has a 90% chance of becoming pregnant within one year. (4)
• Teenage women's contraceptive use at first intercourse rose from 48% to 65% during the 1980s, almost entirely because of a doubling in condom use. By 1995, use at first intercourse reached 78%, with 2/3 of it condom use.(5)
• 9 in 10 sexually active women and their partners use a contraceptive method, although not always consistently or correctly. (6)
• About 1 in 6 teenage women practicing contraception combine two methods, primarily the condom and another method. (7)
• The method teenage women most frequently use is the pill (44%), followed by the condom (38%). About 10% rely on the injectable, 4% on withdrawal and 3% on the implant. (8)
• Condoms have a standardized failure rate of 15.7% over the course of a year.
• Teenagers are less likely than older women to practice contraception without interruption over the course of a year, and more likely to practice contraception sporadically or not at all. (9)

Probabilities in Perspective

Fact: Condoms have a standardized failure rate of 15.7% over the course of a year. Example using a method with a 15% annual failure rate:

• Failure rate after 1 year's time: 15% - 1 in 7 have gotten pregnant.
• Failure rate after 2 year's time: 28% - 1 in 4 have gotten pregnant.
• Failure rate after 3 year's time: 39% - 1 in 3 have gotten pregnant.
• Failure rate after 4 year's time: 48% - 1 in 2 have gotten pregnant.

Bottom line... The best contraceptive is to refrain from sex all together. There is only safer sex; the term safe sex is a myth. It's like saying safe sword juggling. Sooner or later if you play with knives, you are bound to get cut.

Teen Pregnancy Statistics


• Each year, almost 1 million teenage women--10% of all women aged 15-19 and 19% of those who have had sexual intercourse--become pregnant. (10)
• The overall U.S. teenage pregnancy rate declined 17% between 1990 and 1996, from 117 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15-19 to 97 per 1,000. (11)
• 78% of teen pregnancies are unplanned, accounting for about 1/4 of all accidental pregnancies annually. (12)
• More than half (56%) of the 905,000 teenage pregnancies in 1996 ended in births (2/3 of which were unplanned).
• 6 in 10 teen pregnancies occur among 18-19 year-olds. (13)
• Teen pregnancy rates are much higher in the United States than in many other developed countries--twice as high as in England and Wales or Canada, and nine times as high as in the Netherlands or Japan. (14)
• Steep decreases in the pregnancy rate among sexually experienced teenagers accounted for most of the drop in the overall teenage pregnancy rate in the early-to-mid 1990s. While 20% of the decline is because of decreased sexual activity, 80% is due to more effective contraceptive practice. (15)
1. ripnroll.com
2. aspe.hhs.gov
3. LM Dinerman et al, Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Med, 149: 967-27, Sept 1995.
4. Darroch JE, Landry DJ and Oslak S, Age differences between sexual partners in the United States, Family Planning Perspectives, 1999, 31(4):160- 167, Table 1.
5. AGI, 1994, op. cit., Figure 22, p. 33; and Moore KA et al., 1998, op. cit
6. Piccinino LJ and Mosher WD, Trends in contraceptive use in the United States: 1982-1995, Family Planning Perspectives, 1998, 30(1):4-10 & 46
7. Piccinino LJ and Mosher WD, 1998, op. cit.
8. Special tabulations by The Alan Guttmacher Institute of Ibid, Table 5 and of data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth.
9. Glei DA, Measuring contraceptive use patterns among teenage and adult women, Family Planning Perspectives, 1999, 31(2):73- 80, Tables 1 and 2.
10. AGI, Teenage pregnancy: overall trends and state-by-state information, New York: AGI, 1999, Table 1; and Henshaw SK, U.S. Teenage pregnancy statistics with comparative statistics for women aged 20- 24, New York: AGI, 1999, p. 5.
11. Ibid.
12. Henshaw SK, Unintended pregnancy in the United States, Family Planning Perspectives, 1998, 30(1):24-29 & 46, Table 1.
13. Henshaw SK, 1999, op. cit.
14. AGI, 1994, op. cit., Figure 55, p. 76.
15. AGI, U.S. teenage pregnancy rate drops another 4% between 1995 and 1996, news release, New York: AGI, April 29, 1999.