Bristol Palin makes it look way too easy. She appears on the cover of national magazines with her famous mom and baby. She partners with organizations that encourage teens to practice sexual abstinence.Read entire article here.
What are conspicuously absent are the pictures of crying babies who suffer from chronic health issues and their mothers who have dropped out of high school.
While I certainly wish Bristol and Tripp all the best, I’m concerned about the growing trend in teen pregnancy. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, one third of all young women become pregnant before they reach their 20th birthdays. Eighty percent of these 750,000 pregnancies are unplanned. Seventy-nine percent are to unmarried teens.
Although teen pregnancies declined between 1991 and 2005, they rose for the second straight year in 2007. Teenage birth rates in the United States are high, exceeding those found in most industrialized nations.
Teens and their babies face increased health risks.
By Linda Lewis Griffith, St. Louis Tribune
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