For most of the past twenty years, teen birthrates in the United States have fallen. The latest government report shows that the birthrate for teens age fifteen to nineteen fell to a record low in twenty-ten. There were thirty-four births for every one thousand teenagers. That was the lowest rate in almost seventy years of keeping records.
The Guttmacher Institute is a research and policy organization that works on sexual and reproductive health issues. It says nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned. And of these, about four in ten are ended by abortion.
Abortion rates began falling in the nineteen eighties. However, the rate of decrease slowed to a halt between two thousand five and two thousand eight, the most recent years available.
The Guttmacher Institute says nearly fifty million abortions took place between nineteen seventy-three and two thousand eight. Nineteen seventy-three was the year the Supreme Court decided that women have a legal right to abortion.
Three years earlier, Congress and President Richard Nixon agreed that the government should help pay for family planning services for the poor. But that does not include abortion. Under current law, federal funds can only be used to pay for abortions in cases of rape, incest or to save the mother's life.
JUNE SIMMS: People may agree that unwanted pregnancies should be avoided in the first place. But that does not mean they agree on the issue of contraception.
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25