Policy by Pathology

The big push is on. In recent months attention has been focused on teenage pregnancy and schoolbased clinics trying to prevent it. We are told that such clinics, dispensing contraceptives and referring for abortion, are springing up “across the country.” In fact, it seems there are fifty to sixty of these clinics, affecting but a tiny fraction of the 14 million high school students in the country. Some see the highly publicized “experiments” in places such as Chicago and New York as an opening wedge toward making such clinics universal. Others say the clinics are a specific response to the “pregnancy epidemic” among the black “underclass.” It is hard to know which is more troubling.

One question is whether teenage pregnancy is really the problem. Another question is whether such clinics actually reduce teenage pregnancy. Family policy expert Allan Carlson of the Rockford Institute has studied the data and concludes that such programs probably increase rather than decrease the incidence of student pregnancies. One study documents an increase in the number of pregnancies avoided, while another documents an increase in pregnancies. Carlson believes the paradox is not hard to explain: “A spiral of more sexually active teenagers, more contraception, more sexual encounters per teenager, and some level of contraceptive failure would produce both a rising level of averted pregnancies and a rising level of real pregnancies.” And, of course, a rising level of aborted pregnancies, the recommended “backstop” to contraceptive failure.

RJ

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Richard John Neuhaus

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The big push is on. In recent months attention has been focused on teenage pregnancy and schoolbased clinics trying to prevent it. We are told that such clinics, dispensing contraceptives and referring for abortion, are springing up “across the country.” In fact, it seems there are fifty to sixty of these clinics, affecting but a tiny fraction of the 14 million high school students in the country. Some see the highly publicized “experiments” in places such as Chicago and New York as an opening wedge toward making such clinics universal. Others say the clinics are a specific response to the “pregnancy epidemic” among the black “underclass.” It is hard to know which is more troubling.

One question is whether teenage pregnancy is really the problem. Another question is whether such clinics actually reduce teenage pregnancy. Family policy expert Allan Carlson of the Rockford Institute has studied the data and concludes that such programs probably increase rather than decrease the incidence of student pregnancies. One study documents an increase in the number of pregnancies avoided, while another documents an increase in pregnancies. Carlson believes the paradox is not hard to explain: “A spiral of more sexually active teenagers, more contraception, more sexual encounters per teenager, and some level of contraceptive failure would produce both a rising level of averted pregnancies and a rising level of real pregnancies.” And, of course, a rising level of aborted pregnancies, the recommended “backstop” to contraceptive failure.