Yasmin Birth Control

Of all the teenage pregnancies: half are carried to term, 36% are aborted, and 14% result in miscarriages. This means that each year about 500,000 teenagers mother a child and 360,000 teenagers have abortions. Thus unwanted teenage pregnancies lead to about 25% of all of the abortions performed in the United States. Teenagers account for 27% of mothers having their first child in the United States. In 1988, 10,588 births were to mothers who were fourteen years old or younger. Meanwhile, 90% of teenage mothers keep their children, i.e., very few teenage mothers give their children up for adoption. This high statistic can explain why in 1988, 23% of all births to teenagers were not first births. This evidence demonstrates that increasingly in the United States, children are being brought up by teenage parents.

The future of many children of teenagers looks bleak from before they are even born. Thirty three percent of all pregnant teenagers receive inadequate prenatal care, since they either start late in the pregnancy or have too few medical visits. Because of teenage lifestyles, later prenatal care, and poor nutrition, both mothers and children are more likely to have health complications. While affluent pregnant teens are less likely to have these symptoms, they still display several of the symptoms.

Once the children of teenagers are born, the home environment for these future children is not optimal. Two-thirds of all teenage births are to unmarried women. These mothers will probably not receive a high school diploma — only about half graduate from high school by the age of thirty. Eighty-four percent of fathers of children born to teenage mothers live apart from their children and only one-third report visiting their child at least once a week one year after the child’s birth. Sixty-one percent of teenage mothers living apart from the child’s father report that the father offers inadequate support for the child. Finally, when children live in poverty with a single teenage mother, they are at greater risk for lower academic and intellectual accomplishment, problems with self control, and social behavior problems than children of older mothers. These problems are primarily due to the effects of a single parent household, a larger family size, and lower maternal education.
Teenage parents often struggle to complete a high school education and thus face poor career opportunities. Consequently they are disproportionately poor and usually are dependent on public support. The vast number of teenage pregnancies translates into large social costs. Public funds pay for at least half of all teenage births. Births, however, are not the sole cost to the state. Within five years, 77% of all teenage mothers will go on welfare. Furthermore, 43% of all welfare recipients started their families as unmarried teenagers. In 1989, the government spent over twenty-one billion dollars for social, welfare, and health services for families begun by teenagers. Furthermore, babies born to teenagers in that year will cost the government at least six billion dollars over the next twenty years. Even more disturbing is that teenage motherhood and teenage fatherhood both tend to perpetuate themselves from one generation to the next, i.e., children of teenage parents tend to become teenage pareants. Thus, the teenage pregnancy rate that is occurring in the United States is creating spiraling costs for government spending.