Efforts to reduce teen pregnancy paying off in S.C.

By Kimberly Ginfrida
Morning News News Editor
Published: May 15, 2008

Officials with the South Carolina Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy were in the Pee Dee this week to celebrate past successes but continue efforts to educate and find ways to continue to improve their work.

Forrest Alton, executive director, told the Morning News he is taking a two-track approach.

One is to celebrate the tremendous progress of reducing the rate of teen pregnancy of nearly 40 percent from 1990 to 2004.

The other is to stress that we have a long way to go because nearly 10,000 teenage girls will get pregnant every year.

The agency pushes an approach that is inclusive — it wants to make room for everybody.

They make four promises:

n To spend time with the community audience.

n Customize approaches.

n Help increase local ability to deal with the problem.

n Commit to helping long term.

This is too important an issue to try and polarize people along the lines of either/or. Their approach is a yes/and, and research shows it is working.

They correctly push what they call the “effectiveness of an abstinence-first, age appropriate, comprehensive approach to sexuality education which begins with a strong message of abstinence as the first and best choice combined with information on condoms and contraception.”

And the important thing to remember is that teen pregnancy comes with a cost to the community.

And so efforts to reduce it play a role in helping to improve the overall community.

As is the case with most issues, such as income, education, health, the Pee Dee has a higher rate than most of South Carolina.

Alton uses the example of Florence County were in 2003 about 323 teenage girls got pregnant.

If 250 of them gave birth then here in 2008, we will have the equivalent of 10 kindergarten classrooms of these babies.

And research shows that many of these children have physical and developmental issues.

So, efforts to reduce the problem help all of us.

So far, the program’s funding is included in the Senate’s version of the budget.

Let’s hope it stays there.