Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Texas wins a prize for high teen births

Texas papers such as the Dallas Morning News and Houston Chronicle are the only papers in the country reporting the results for Texas of a Child Trends teen pregnancy study that is supposed to come out tomorrow. I can only assume that being allowed to break a story early is a reward for their cities' stellar performances: Dallas has the highest proportion of repeat teen births and Houston leads in births under age 15. Of course there is nothing funny about any of this.

The majority are to Latinos. About 95% of Texas schools provide no information other than abstinence to students, a policy supported by white-majority churches such as the Southern Baptist Conference. The lack of information may disproportionately impact Latinos, however, who may come from cultures where sex and birth control are not discussed and may have less access to the internet or other sources of information.

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