McCain, Palin And Bush vs Teen Pregnancy
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McCain, Palin And Bush vs Teen Pregnancy
by DemFromCT
Tue Sep 02, 2008 at 09:20:29 PM PDT
One of Sarah Palin's policies is in the spotlight today. From WaPo:
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.
Sarah Palin and John McCain almost certainly share the same opinion of contraception:
Earlier today the Associated Press reported that Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, opposed funding to prevent teen pregnancies, a position that Palin also took as governor. "The explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support," she wrote in a 2006 questionnaire distributed among gubernatorial candidates.
And this from 2007:
Q: "What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?"
Mr. McCain: (Long pause) "Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy."
That would be President George Bush, the current head of McCain's GOP, and the fellow McCain agrees with so often.
Here are the stats on teen pregnancies from BBC:
The US is said to have one of the worst annual rates of teenage pregnancies in the developed world.
According to a report by Population Action International, published at the end of last year, there were 44 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19 in the US for 2000-2005.
This compares with figures in the UK - itself said to be the country with the worst teenage pregnancy rate in Europe - of 27 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19.
Put differently, America is estimated to have some 750,000 teenage pregnancies a year.
On purpose? Nope.
"About one-third of girls in the United States get pregnant before age 20."
More than 80% of births in this group "were unintended, meaning they occurred sooner than desired or were not wanted at any time", the CDC said.
So does abstinence work? Nope.
A recent study of four abstinence education programs, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., finds that the programs had no effect on the sexual abstinence of youth.
So if abstinence doesn't work, and teens get pregnant, and you don't support them (policy-wise) before or after, what's that called?
Compassionate conservatism.
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