Pregnancies & Sexually Transmitted Diseases on the Rise Among Teens

More teenagers and young adults are having sex, sparking an increase in teen births in both 2006 and 2007, and putting an end to more than a decade of significant decline. In fact, nearly three quarters of a million pregnancies occurred among American females under the age of 20 in 2004 that reversed the downward trend from 1991 to 2004.

To make matters work, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among young Americans are also on the rise. The annual rate of AIDS cases among boys ages 15 to 19 has almost doubled over the past decade, while the number of syphilis diagnoses are up among both teens and young adults. In addition, almost a quarter of teen girls aged 15 to 19 were infected with a human papilomavirus (HPV) from 2003 to 2004, as were almost half of young women between the ages of 20 and 25.

The troubling news comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The report was based on data compiled during the years 2002 through 2007 that was gathered from the National Vital Statistics System, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the National Survey of Family Growth and studies of hundreds of thousands children and young adults ranging in age from 10 to 25.

According to the report, the numbers indicate that the American youth is in need of better sex education that includes emphasis on STD and pregnancy prevention. In the report, the CDC writes, “The data presented in this report indicate that many young persons in the United States engage in sexual risk behavior and experience negative reproductive health outcomes.”

The report found that although more than 80 percent of boys and girls reported having received formal instruction before age 18 on how to say no to sex, among those 18 to 19 years of age, only 49.8 percent of girls and just 35 percent of boys had discussed methods of birth control with a parent. In general, nearly 70 percent of teen girls as well as 66 percent of boys reported receiving instruction on methods of birth control.

Other discoveries included that for boys ages 15 to 17, about 32 percent had engaged in sex compared to thirty percent of girls in the same age range. However, among those ages 18 to 19, almost 65 percent of boys and 71 percent of girls had experienced sex. Disturbingly, nearly 10 percent of young women ranging from 18 to 24 years reported that their first intercourse had been involuntary. About 100,000 females among the age range of 10 to 24 were treated in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal sexual assault injuries during the period between 2004 and 2006.

Among those sexually active teens, infections with the human immune deficiency virus that causes AIDS rose from 1.3 cases per 100,000 in 1997 to 2.5 cases in 2006 among boys aged 15 to 19. The syphilis rates among females aged 15 to 19 increased from 1.5 cases per 100,000 in 2004 to 2.2 cases per 100,000 in 2006 after having significantly declined between 1997 and 2005. Gonorrhea infections rates have leveled off after decreasing for more than two decades. Approximately 1 million American teens and young adults ages 10 to 24 reported contracting chlamydia, gonorrhea or syphilis in 2006, accounting for nearly half of all incident sexually transmitted diseases and 25 percent of the sexually active population.

The researchers concluded from their findings, “The sexual and reproductive health of America's young persons remains an important public health concern,” and also noted, “Earlier progress appears to be slowing and perhaps reversing."