Pregnancy in Adolescence

Abstract

In this issue ofThe Journal, Spitz et al 1 examine child-bearing rates for US teenagers in the decade of the 1980s. The authors wisely divide these data into 5-year periods. To have done otherwise would have been misleading, for these rates prove to have been mercurial: stable from 1980 to 1985, markedly increased for 1985 to 1990. An analysis of more recent data shows rates declining in 1991 to 1992. 2 Accordingly, before attributing meaning to these data, one must take a longer view. In the 1970s, birth rates among adolescents declined sharply, probably owing to the legalization and availability of abortion; for reasons that are not clear, these rates then leveled off until 1988, when they rose to a new peak for 10- to 17-year-olds. 3(p334) See also p 989. Using as the denominator the numbers of sexually active adolescent girls rather than all those in a given