"Teenage pregnancies.(Brief Article)." Catholic Insight 12.5 (May 2004): 25(1). Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. Centennial High School (MD). 23 Jan. 2007 http://find.galenet.com/ips/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T003&prodId=IPS&docId=A116409358&source=gale&srcprod=SRCG&userGroupName=elli29753&version=1.0.


Teenage Pregnancies
This article focused on pregnant teens in Western Europe. Currently the highest teenage pregnancies rates in this area are in Britain. The London Daily Telegraph states that teenage pregnancies in England increased by 800 between 2001 and 2002, despite 15 million dollars spent by government on strategies to reduce them. One in every ten babies born in England has a teenage mother. Pregnancies under 18-year-olds rose from 38,439 in 2001 to 39,286 in 2002. Forty six percent of the 2001 pregnancies were aborted. Anne Weyman, chief executive of the Family Planning Association (FPA), believes that good sex and relationship education can be very effective. On the other hand Valerie Riches, the British right-to-life advocate,points out that abstinence education in the U.S. has resulted in a 10 percent drop in teenage pregnancies.The FPA, she states, confuses the childs mind about right and wrong and presents only one moral solution, the use of condoms. One FPA pamphlet tells young girls, "Contraceptive advice and supplies are free to everyone. It doesn't matter how old you are ... there's no right age to have sex." Everyone has their own opinion on teen pregnancy. This brings me to a couple questions on other rates of teen pregnancies in other countries, not just the US and Europe.