Courtesy of MSNBC.com, February 19, 2010

By Kari Huus

After declining for 15 years, the teen pregnancy rate is now on the rise in the United States, which has by far the highest rate in the industrialized world. The number of pregnancies among girls age 15 to 19 increased 3 percent between 2005 and 2006, showed a study of the most recent data collected by the federal government and the Guttmacher Institute, the non-profit research group in New York that released the report last month.

Reasons behind the rise are debated, but some blame increasing poverty and an emphasis on abstinence-only sex education. The Guttmacher Institute notes that declining teen pregnancy rates first started to stall out about a decade ago when programs promoting abstinence, without offering education about birth control, became more widespread.

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