“U.S. teen pregnancy rate remains highest in developed world”. This is a recent headline from the Los Angeles Standard-Examiner website.

So the US is a world leader in yet another statistic that rates right up there with murder and military invasions.

The new data, taken from a survey conducted in 19 states from 2004 to 2008, underscore the problems with access to contraception and education on how to use contraceptives effectively, the report states. Half of the teen girls age 15 to 19 who became pregnant were not using any method of birth control. Among those, 31 percent said they didn’t think they could get pregnant at the time.

One stunning quote out of the article that explains some teen pregnancy very well was this one:
“Almost one-quarter said their partners did not want them to use contraception while 22 percent said they didn’t mind if they got pregnant.” (emphasis ours)

Cool guys! You don’t have to carry the kid around for the next nine months and put up with all the shit that follows. Very masculine!

Children born to women who smoke during pregnancy are not at increased risk for autism, according to a new study.

This is according to an article on the Health.com’s website Jan 20, 2012.

In this study, researchers analyzed data from nearly 4,000 Swedish children with autism and a control group of 39,000 children without autism. The results showed that 19.8 percent of the children in the autism group and 18.4 percent of those in the control group had mothers who smoked during pregnancy.

The study leader does however go on to say that smoking during pregnancy is still unhealthy for both the mother and for the fetus.

We’ve written about this before and it may be worth a re-read:
DANGER: Smoking while you’re Pregnant

A Washington state teenager created her fake pregnancy in order to explore stereotypes about teen pregnancy.

Teen Pregnancy Faked to tell a Story

Gaby Rodriguez of Toppenish, Wash. earned international headlines last April when she announced at a high school assembly that she had worn a faux baby bump for months to explore stereotypes about teen pregnancy.

Only a handful of people, including her mother, boyfriend and principal, were in on the secret. The rest of the Toppenish community, where buildings are adorned with Western-themed murals in central Washington’s agricultural Yakima Valley, had no clue.

The whole article from the Olympian newspaper on teen pregnancy is here: