Don’t panic over teen pregnancy prevention cuts

It was the Obama administration that found they weren't working.

Helen M. Alvaré | Aug 23 2017 | comment

There’s about to be another panic in the New York Times and elsewhere about whether we’re giving enough contraception-friendly advice to teens. But even news stories covering this development are admitting that the programs aren’t wildly effective.

Several outlets, the Times included, are correctly reporting that the federal government is cutting off funding early for a wide swath of Teen Pregnancy Prevention programs. The new Department of Health and Human Services is indeed ending contracts with a variety of providers in June 2018.

In the Times article, HHS is pointing out that the programs are not very effective. What’s really stunning is that the proponents of continued funding can’t muster a strong disagreement. They are rather saying that:

“Most of [the] projects,” the Obama Administration evaluated “were found to be no better than the sex education or behaviour health programs already in place in the schools or communities where the projects were.”
“Only 12 of the 41 were found to have changed sex-related behaviour.”
“Sometimes, positive effects seen at three or six months evaporated by 12 months.” And some projects did not measure pregnancy rates, but “self-reported sexual activity, and it’s not clear if that’s reliable….” And (admitting high rates of failure)….The “success rates of the evaluated projects were similar to those of clinical trials in medicine, so cutting funding for pregnancy prevention is like “cutting medical research because the vast majority of approaches, interventions and treatments that are tried are proven not to work.”

It’s true that abstinence programs have not proved a silver bullet either, but neither have they been treated with the kid gloves (if at first you don’t succeed…try, try again!) of the contraceptive programs.

And finally, those panicking over the cuts, and claiming that the contraceptive programs are closely related to big declines in teen pregnancy over the last several decades are forgetting one crucial thing.

Rates of nonmarital teen pregnancy have actually increased from 14 nonmarital pregnancies per 1000 teens in the 1950s, to 21.5 per 1000 today—a 50% increase. Teen pregnancy rates overall have declined in large part because teens aren’t getting married any more. (See Eileen Patten and Gretchen Livingston, “Why is the teen birth rate falling?” Pew Research Center: Facttank, April 29, 2016)

So tying these soon-to-be-ended programs to declines in teen pregnancy is not a strong argument.

Helen M. Alvaré is a Professor of Law at George Mason University where she teaches and writes in the areas of family law, and law and religion. Republished with permission from Women Speak For Themselves.

August 23, 2017

When it comes to history you would rather forget, Stalinist Russia ranks pretty high it seems to me. In an article today (originally published before the Charlottesville incident) James Glaser, Professor and Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences at Tufts University, describes what Moscow has done with statues of Soviet villains. As the debate about America's Confederate monuments continues, the Muscovite example seems worth considering.