CROUSE: Teen pregnancy fact check

The first step in reducing teen pregnancy and abortion is to know the facts.

Actually, we know what works. Child Trends and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy published their own data and the corroborating findings of a vast body of scientific research, which found that the recipe for delaying sexual activity is parental involvement, good friends, strong faith and participation in church activities.

The bottom line, they said, is that parents and friends have tremendous influence on their children, regardless of socio-demographic or economic background and characteristics.

Obviously, many of the nation’s adolescents don’t have those positive influences in their lives; researchers from the left and the right acknowledge the problems associated with single-parent families, father absence, declining church attendance and lack of community networks.

Adolescent girls facing those challenges in their personal lives are particularly vulnerable. Only 1.7 percent of teenage males were fathers in 2002; that means the vast majority of fathers of the babies born to teen mothers are age 20 or older. There are far more sexually experienced girls than there are girls who are sexually active — which probably means that the girls’ sexual initiations were not likely precipitated by mutual passion and instead involved drugs and/or alcohol. So, it is not surprising that fully 63 percent of teens regret early sexual activity and wish they had waited.

But, there is good news. Teen sexual activity is down, teen births are down, and teen abortions are down. Since their peak, early teen birthrates have declined 45 percent, and older teen birthrates have declined 27 percent. The percentage of sexually experienced teenagers among all races has leveled out, and the decline among non-Hispanic blacks is one-fifth. Along with these positive changes is an accompanying decline in high-risk sexual behaviors.

Experts from the right and the left stand amazed; many thought they would never see positive progress in these hard-to-reverse trends. None of that is good enough, of course. We lead the developed nations in teen pregnancy and the number of abortions is still far too high.

However, these trend reversals indicate that policy counts. For the well-being of the nation’s teens, we must support those policies that work and discontinue those policies that are counterproductive.

Two actions are essential:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that the number of sexually active teens has declined from 54 percent to 46 percent and that a majority of teens say that abstinence education was an important factor in their decision to abstain from sex. Other extensive studies by the Adolescent and Family Health journal credit abstinence for a 67 percent decline in teen pregnancies. A study by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health reflected a 40 percent lower likelihood of pregnancy for girls taking virginity pledges.

It is past time for responsible adults in our culture - parents, teachers, community and religious leaders, and pastors - to reach out with the truth to those vulnerable young people who lack parental involvement, faith and good friends in their everyday lives. “Safe sex” messages mislead these teens; the best choice for all teens is to remain abstinent until marriage and to be faithful in marriage. Those choices lead to the greatest well-being in life. It is unfair that our most vulnerable teens are the ones who are not given the full truth.

Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., is director and senior fellow of the Beverly LaHaye Institute at Concerned Women for America.