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It was an encouraging headline to read -- "Canada’s Teen Pregnancy Rate Falls" –- and it came upon the heels of other encouraging headlines: "Teen Pregnancy On The Decline" and "Drop In Teen Pregnancies A Good-News Story." The story, of course, is that rates of teenage pregnancies in Canada and the U.S. declined dramatically in between the years of 1996 and 2006: in Canada, by nearly 37 percent; in the U.S., by 25 percent. That’s great, right?
Of course, any decline in pregnancy rates for teens is good news. Teenagers getting pregnant is not generally held to be a desirable thing, and so any reduction in the rate of that "thing" happening is good. But the numbers are bit confusing.
Teen pregnancy rates, for the purposes of the study that came up with these results (released by the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada), were measured on the basis of live births and abortions. So what the numbers mean, it seems, is that there was a dramatic drop in the numbers of teenage girls giving birth or terminating pregnancies. Rates of miscarriage or stillbirth, which are usually factored into the calculation of pregnancy rates, weren’t counted. Which, for statistical purposes is fine, but it muddies the waters slightly in terms of how we discuss the significance of those statistics. And discussing the significance of those statistics is already complicated, given that what’s at stake is important information about the effectiveness of certain types of sexual health education and sexual health promotion programs. Something, it seems, has declined -– teen pregnancy rates, birth rates, abortion rates –- but how and why?
Consider this: The study’s authors conclude, on the basis of the results of their research, that “well-developed sexual health education programming that targets contraception and safer sex practices can have a positive effect on adolescent behavior.” But as Canada’s National Post points out, that only makes sense if we’re considering the Canadian numbers: “if Canada’s figures were the only ones under the microscopic (sic), the authors would seem to have a solid case that sex education was the hero in the story. But stats within the declining birth rates and stats from other countries tend to contradict such a facile conclusion.” They go on to note that, according to the study, “abortion still accounted for 47% of the decline in Canadian birth rates in 2005. If sex ed were really working, wouldn’t contraception be more widespread and abortion rates in decline?”
This is where things get complicated: We might say that pregnancy rates have dropped among teens in Canada, but we’re really talking about a decline in birth and abortion rates, and abortion rates have an effect on birth rates, so how do we make sense of what this means about teen sexual behavior?
According to the study, teens are a little less sexually active than they once were, but not enough to account fully for the drop in pregnancy/birth/abortion rates. Those drops might be accounted for as being the result of more teens practicing safer sex -– but to sort that out, we’d need to figure out what the general rate of pregnancy is against the rates of live births and those against the rates of abortion. And that might be possible, just using the numbers from the study, but I’m too tired to try to call up my inner –- and retired –- social scientist to do that head-busting work.
We’re left to try to sort out the implications of a declining teen pregnancy rate that is actually a declining teen birth rate (if it is, in fact, declining; more on this below). The Post worries about the lesson from Sweden: “Sweden, always considered a bellwether in enlightened sexual secularity, had an extremely low birth rate for teens –- only 6.0 per 1000 (“Sweden has had a generally stable ... teen birth/abortion rate since 2002”), but abortion accounted for a stunning 81% of the low birth rate in 2006, which suggests Swedish girls are using abortion as birth control –- and perhaps the same is true in the other countries with extremely low birth rates. If true, that is nothing to celebrate.”
They’re right, of course. We don’t want our girls having more abortions. But is that what the general numbers really say? The study indicates that rates of birth and abortion, taken together, are falling among teens in North America.
