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Lower than the 1950s era of Traditional Family Values And Abstinence, even. (Which isn't all that surprising, as teen pregnancy rates in the Halcyon Days Of Morality were more common than they've been at any point in the last decade.)
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_facto...e_reason_is_contraception_not_abstinence.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_facto...e_reason_is_contraception_not_abstinence.html
With the ever-present buzz of cultural panic about young people, especially young women, having sex, you'd be forgiven for thinking we're living in the midst of some kind of sexual health pandemic, with our high schools and even junior high schools overflowing with the swollen bellies of pregnant teenagers. The reality, according to a Centers for Disease Control report released Friday, is that the teen birth rate has plunged downward yet again, falling 6 percent between 2011 and 2012. It has never been lower, as least not in the 73 years the government has been tracking it.
...
So what's changed? It certainly wasn't that teenagers en masse decided to stop having sex. Teen sex rates have stayed about the same since 2002. Abortions for teenagers haven't gone up, either. As much as the Sandra Fluke haters will cringe to hear it, the difference is contraception use. Speaking to NBC News, Dr. John Santelli, a professor of population and family health at Columbia University, attributed the change to a greater emphasis on getting effective contraception to teens, especially long-acting methods like the IUD.