Planned Parenthood misrepresents CDC report on teen pregnancy
Washington, D.C. (27 October 2010) – Planned Parenthood misrepresents CDC report on teen pregnancy
While a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report provides more evidence that abstinence education decreases teen sexual activity and pregnancy, Planned Parenthood has put its own spin on the numbers to promote its childhood sex education programs.
“This is another illustration of how Planned Parenthood uses deception at every level to promote its deadly agenda,” said Rita Diller, national director of Stop Planned Parenthood International (STOPP), an American Life League project.
The recently released CDC report entitled “State Disparities in Teenage Birth Rates in the United States” acknowledges that teenage birthrates have continued to decline since their peak in 1991. It then examines the ethnicity of teen mothers in 2007, and finds they are predominantly Hispanic and black in almost every state.
In response, Planned Parenthood issued a misleading press release that stated, “This new CDC report makes it crystal clear that the teen birthrate is lower in states that provide students with comprehensive, evidence-based sex education.”
The CDC report, however, makes no mention of what type of sex education (or abstinence message) is being used in any state or area. And Planned Parenthood conveniently ignores the fact that the decrease in teen sexual activity and teen pregnancy coincide with the availability and popularity of giving abstinence messages to kids across the U.S. in the 1990s and into the 2000s.
The report affirms that “[t]here has been a broad consensus on the goal of preventing teenage pregnancy, and a wide variety of public and private programs have been developed to meet this challenge.”
The report attributes the variations in teenage birthrates’ states and ethnicities to “many factors, including differences in socioeconomic factors, such as education and income, risk behaviors such as sexual activity and contraceptive use, and attitudes among teenagers toward pregnancy and childbearing.”
But Planned Parenthood’s misleading release reveals its intent to “bombard minority teens with its salacious, perverted, immoral sex education by means of a huge amount of taxpayer funding from the Obama administration,” according to Diller, commenting on Planned Parenthood’s claim that “[s]ex educators like Planned Parenthood are poised to make tremendous progress in reducing teen pregnancy, because for the first time in American history the federal government has ensured that federal funds will be used primarily by states and community organizations that provide evidence-based sex education to reduce teen pregnancy. … The Obama administration’s allocation of $155 million for evidence-based sex education represents a true turning point in the history of sex education in the United States.”
“Planned Parenthood was behind the wheel of sex education in the United States during the years when teen sexual activity was increasing dramatically,” Diller pointed out. “However, teen pregnancy and sexual activity rates began an almost two-decade decline with the availability and popularity of abstinence messages, bolstered by a small amount of public funding. So, it is truly terrifying to think that the new turning point of sex education is a 180-degree wrong turn – back into the clutches of Planned Parenthood.”
American Life League was cofounded in 1979 by Judie Brown. It is the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization in the United States and is committed to the protection of all innocent human beings from the moment of creation to death. For more information or press inquiries, please contact Katie Walker at 540.659.4942.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
- Center for Disease Control and Prevention: State Disparities in Teen Birth Rates in United States http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db46.pdf
- Planned Parenthood: Statement by Leslie Kantor, National Director of Education, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, on New CDC Report Showing Disparity in Teen Birthrates by States (10 October 2010) http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/statement-leslie-kantor-national-director-education-planned-parenthood-federation-america-new-c-33939.htm
- American Life League: Stop Planned Parenthood International http://www.stopp.org/
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