Teenage Pregnancies

In the wake of its failure to curb teenage pregnancy through sex education and counseling, the administration of Gov. Pete Wilson is turning to a tough, new tactic: greater enforcement of laws against men having sex with underage girls. "The message to adult men is clear: Stay away from young girls and if you don't, you'll go to jail," said San Diego County Dist. Atty. Paul Pfingst, whose office is taking an unusually aggressive approach to the new program.

On Mother's Day, my daughter and her friend Jenny sat on our sofa rocking their baby dolls. It would have been an ordinary, sweet scene of children playing house, if Aviva and Jenny weren't teenagers. Our affluent school district has a thing for gadgets. In some classes, students have instant-answer transmitters, paid for by the schools' fundraising foundation, that enable the teacher to find out instantly whether students understand the lesson. Less successful — and I'm being generous here — was the software that supposedly taught good writing.

In an effort to reduce California's 70,000 births to teenage mothers every year, the state Health and Welfare Agency on Wednesday unveiled a $3-million advertising campaign to deter young men from having sex with adolescent girls. Separate Spanish- and English-language ads will target men aged 18 to 24, warning that statutory rape is a serious crime. The ads also encourage young men to take responsibility for the children they have already fathered.

For 17-year-old David Mendez the price of admission to a computer training course included lessons in a male's responsibility in preventing teenage pregnancy. "It makes you think about how all your plans would change if you weren't careful," Mendez said of Project Amiga's Male Responsibility for Pregnancy Prevention Program. "You have to decide if being a parent so young is the life you want, or whether you want to be better prepared in life first."

A study shows that the state's teen birthrate is dropping, but Nevada officials said further education is needed to keep even more adolescent girls from getting pregnant. Since 1999, the state's birthrate among teenagers has dropped from 61 per 1,000 girls ages 15 to 19 to 56 per 1,000 girls last year, according to the study released this week by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. During the middle and late 1990s Nevada had the most teenage pregnancies in the nation per capita.

California in 1996 registered the largest single-year drop in the rate of teenage pregnancies in 25 years, and the decline was spread among all regions of the state and all ethnic groups, the state Department of Health Services reported Friday. Statewide, the birth rate of mothers between the ages of 15 and 19 fell 9% in 1996 from 1995. There were 63,118 births to girls in this category in 1996, down from 66,644 the year before, and from more than 70,000 in 1991.

California's teenage birthrate has fallen substantially for the sixth year in a row. The birthrate among those 15 through 19 years old fell 8% in 1997, the most recent year for which figures are available. Births to teenagers have declined 22% since the trend was first detected in 1992, state health officials reported. Among younger girls, ages 10 through 14, the birthrate fell 15.4%, the largest annual decrease ever reported. Grantland Johnson, newly named by Gov.

Orange County social workers will no longer recommend to Juvenile Court judges that any underage girls brought under the county's protection as possible abuse victims be married to their adult male sex partners, the head of the county's social service agency announced Thursday.

Gov. Pete Wilson on Thursday kicked off an advertising campaign to combat teenage pregnancy and touted it as the largest media blitz ever aimed at the issue. State and private contributions are expected to generate $22 million in television commercials over the next two years--enough to maintain a broadcast level equal to most statewide political campaigns. The television message will be bolstered with public support from celebrities such as National Basketball Assn.

A study shows that the state's teen birthrate is dropping, but Nevada officials said further education is needed to keep even more adolescent girls from getting pregnant. Since 1999, the state's birthrate among teenagers has dropped from 61 per 1,000 girls ages 15 to 19 to 56 per 1,000 girls last year, according to the study released this week by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. During the middle and late 1990s Nevada had the most teenage pregnancies in the nation per capita.

One teenage pregnancy does not present a health risk, Scottish researchers have found, but subsequent pregnancies during the teen years do. The study contradicts previous findings that initial teen pregnancies are a hazard, and is the first to find that subsequent pregnancies produce a greater risk. Dr. Gordon C.S. Smith of the University of Glasgow and his colleagues identified 110,233 nonsmoking Scottish women, ages 15 to 29, who gave birth for the first or second time between 1992 and 1998.

Tony Hammond came to Las Vegas on a Greyhound bus with $250 in his pocket and, like migrants everywhere, hopes for a better life. Four months later, Hammond was penniless and in the streets. "Twenty-seven and homeless," said Hammond, his face flushed with embarrassment and his dark eyes staring at the ground.

Nevada Dove can't go to work without her nephew. While talking to her co-workers, she stops mid-sentence and jumps from her seat when she hears the toddler crying. She simultaneously pores over reports for her job at Concerned Citizens of South-Central Los Angeles and watches the boy run around the office, wrapping his arms around people's legs and trying to get into a bag of Chee-tos. Dove may be the 18-month-old boy's aunt, but she feels more like his mother, she said.

California's teenage birthrate has fallen substantially for the sixth year in a row. The birthrate among those 15 through 19 years old fell 8% in 1997, the most recent year for which figures are available. Births to teenagers have declined 22% since the trend was first detected in 1992, state health officials reported. Among younger girls, ages 10 through 14, the birthrate fell 15.4%, the largest annual decrease ever reported. Grantland Johnson, newly named by Gov.

At 15, Jessica Cosby has an arm that may send her to college and beyond--to the Olympics, she hopes. The Granada Hills 10th-grader is Los Angeles' most accomplished female shotputter, a solid sprinter and a renowned rebounder who has twice made the all-city girls' basketball team. If Cosby is going to be a statistic, she wants to appear in the box scores on the sports page, not in an update on teen pregnancy.

As part of a program to prevent teenage pregnancy, a nonprofit community organization and the Lennox School District on Friday opened the doors of the Lennox Teen Pregnancy Prevention Center. The district and the Richstone Family Center created the center for a pregnancy prevention program that has been operating in the district for more than a year. The site is at Lennox Middle School and will serve about 2,000 students.

California in 1996 registered the largest single-year drop in the rate of teenage pregnancies in 25 years, and the decline was spread among all regions of the state and all ethnic groups, the state Department of Health Services reported Friday. Statewide, the birth rate of mothers between the ages of 15 and 19 fell 9% in 1996 from 1995. There were 63,118 births to girls in this category in 1996, down from 66,644 the year before, and from more than 70,000 in 1991.