State teen birth rate rises for second year in a row

More teenagers are just saying yes to sex —- and having babies as a result.

The teen birth rate in the United States increased 1 percent in 2007, the second year in a row the rate has gone up, according to a national study released Wednesday. The two-year hike —- 5 percent —- reverses 14 years in which the teen birth rate steadily decreased.

In Georgia, the teen birth rate increased by two-tenths of 1 percent.

Those are some findings from a study conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based in Atlanta.

The trend, say family-health planners and physicians, is troubling but hardly surprising. They blame less education and diminished access to family planning for the increase.

“A lesson [on sex] in the eighth grade is not enough anymore,” said Dr. Melissa Kottke, medical director Grady Health System’s Teen Services Program. The federally funded clinic sees about 2,000 teens yearly, offering family-planning lessons, education and contraceptives to some clients.

“All kids go through this process of becoming a sexual person,” Kottke said. “It is important that we guide them.”

In the report, statisticians looked at live births in 2007, the latest year for which numbers were available. They concluded:

> For females 15 to 19, births rose to 42.5 per 1,000. In real numbers, that’s more than 445,000 births nationwide in 2007. That’s roughly the population of Atlanta.

> The birth rate for females 10 to 14 remained unchanged; less than 1 percent of the births reported in 2006 and 2007 were to girls in that age range. That means more than 6,000 girls 14 and younger gave birth in each of those years.

> The highest increase, by race, occurred among American Indian or females of native Alaskan heritage —- 7 percent.

The study does not break out numbers of teen births by state, said Stephanie Ventura, who heads the national center’s branch that reviews reproduction statistics. The center reviewed 98.7 percent of all births in the United States.

The records for Georgia were incomplete, Ventura said. In 2007, the state changed its birth certificate requirements, meaning statisticians didn’t have access to a full year of complete data, she said.

The numbers are hard to ignore, said Bill Albert, a spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “A 1 percent increase in a year doesn’t sound like a lot,” he said. “But 5 percent [increase] in two years starts looking … like a trend.”