Left photo:  California contingent of  The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy  poses in front of the Capitol.

California Works to Curb Teen Pregnancy

California's come a long way, baby! In the early 1990s its teen pregnancy rate was the highest in the nation. 15 years later by 2005  the rate had been cut in half to an all-time low with approx. 50,000 babies being born.

California's teen pregnancy rate decline was the most of any state (national decline was 37% over the same period. Californians "just said no" to the federal program to promote abstinence. They tried it for about five years and found that abstinence didn't work.  

Instead, a series of programs and initiatives to educate students about sex, pregnancy and even HIV/AIDS prevention was instituted (not without some controversy, of course,) but the results have been dramatic. In every demographic--Hispanics teens, white teens, and black teens--the pregnancy rate dropped 50%. The current annual net costs to taxpayers of births to teen mothers in California are estimated to be just under $2 billion. (By comparison, California plans to spend  around $155 billion in the 2014-15 budget.)

Here's are some facts:

• The San Joaquin Valley has the highest teen birth rates of any region in California - over twice the rate of the San Francisco Bay Area.
• Tulare and Kings Counties have the highest birth rates to teen mothers.
• Two of every three babies born to teens in California are born to Latinas.
• 70% of teen mothers drop out of high school.
• Only one out of five teen mothers receive any financial support from their child's father.
• 80% of teen fathers do not marry the teen girls who bore their child.
• Fathers of children born to teens are on average almost four years older than the mothers, and a majority is over the age of 21.
• Poor and low-income teens who make up approximately 40% of the adolescent population, and account for 83% of teens who give birth.
• An estimated 50 to 60% of parenting teens have been sexually abused, twice the national rate for never-pregnant teens.