"statistics" say black teens have the highest pregnancy rate...?

Question

...may be so, but who thinks there are other varying factors that sway this "fact".

Could it be that many of these statistics come from lower class, poor communities where these girls and their families can not afford abortions?

Go into the mostly white, upperclass neighborhood high schools and ask how many girls had their families (or their rich boyfriends) pay for one, or more abortions. They may not say, so why don't you go to the doctor's hospitals, and clinics, and ask how many rich, white, teenage girls had abortions funded by their parents/and or boyfriends?

Opinions?

Oh yeah, keep the racist and ignorent comments off - this is a legitimate topic concerning legitimate and educated comments for discussion.

So far I am getting some very insightful, thought provoking responses...thanks for everyone's input thus far!

Answer 1

you are completely right in taking these stats with a gain of salt. I like that you are looking for confounding factors in the results. the lower class may not be able to afford birth control products or education.

There are been studies that show the upper class (forget ethnicity right now) have fewer offspring than the middle class who have fewer offspring than the lower class. One reason is the lack of the use of birth control products, either the pill, patch or condoms.

Unfortunately the predominantly Caucasian schools are in middle and upper class areas while predominately African-American schools are in lower class areas. I know this is not true every where, but in the big picture. As a result, teen pregnancy is following the same trends as the stats based on social class.

A good study would report on the ethnicity, social class, geographic location, education level completed, age and other factors. A multiple regression analysis or ANOVA would allow the research to look for main effects of the different factors and for any interactions between them.

Answer 2

The only answer I can give is that I always ignore statistics.

They really are a crap shoot.

The only thing reliable about polling a few hundred people is that you get statistics for that group only -- it is merely an ASSUMPTION that their percentages of answers correlate to the populace at large. It's all horse manure. If the pollsters get, say, a 90% vote on a certain opinion, there's every chance that they just happened to encounter a group of people who felt that way.

Just look at what they always print as a disclaimer for surveys: something about there's a 3% margin for error. That's crap -- there's always a 100% margin for error. Oh, wait, you DO have to discount the people actually polled, so it would be more like a 99.999999999999991% margin.

The only accurate survey would be one that polled every person in the affected city, county, state, or country.

Answer 3

I agree with your argument - those factors contribute, but statistics are inherently unbiased. If the statistics do say that black teens have the highest pregnancy rating I think that the results stem from environmental factors, rather than exist in lieu of them. In short, I agree. Black teens do not have a higher pregnancy rate because they are black, rather it is because a higher percentage live in lower class, poor communities where contraceptives or abortions may not be affordable.

Answer 4

I doubt that the statistics are gathered by asking girls in different neighborhoods whether or not that they have kids or have ever had abortions. More likely, they're being taken from birth records provided by hospitals to the government. But you may be right about the ratio of girls having abortions and girls actually having their babies. But have you ever considered that there are still free clinics available for girls seeking abortions?

Answer 5

I'm afraid you're the one who has introduced racism into this question, by assuming white people "mostly" pay for multiple abortions for their wayward daughters.

"Most" people on any color are against abortion--at least in principle. It doesn't mean that most people want abortion to be illegal--it just means that "most" people would never consider going through with one.

The issue of teen pregnancies has everything to do with access to education, preventive care, and yes, even abortion.

That means that poor folk, white, black, hispanic, or asian-- have less access to all of the things that can prevent pregnancy. These folk, therefore, have higher teen pregnancy rates.

I am so sorry for you that you think of "cheap" abortion as a solution to this problem that obviously goes much deeper than that.

Answer 6

I agree. Those statistics are flawed a huge deal. When white teens do get pregnant they do tend to abort that baby. Not all of them do but a great deal. The people that do these statistics don't count aborted babies so the study is all messed up. Black people tend not to abort.

Answer 7

I agree to a certain extent. I wouldn't say that it's a fact being able to afford an abortion, but I do agree that it has to do with being lower class. I believe people, of all races, in the lower class feel they have no way out. They don't believe they will be going to college so they really don't bother planning for the future. I think the middle and upper class, of course they get pregnant, but they also plan more for college and more will have protected sex to ensure a decent future. Maybe I way off, but that’s my opinion.

Answer 8

"Could it be that many of these statistics come from lower class, poor communities where these girls and their families can not afford abortions?"

Uh, considering that abortion can't occur unless/until pregnancy does, why would that make any difference?

If a pregnancy is aborted, that's not like getting a marriage 'annulled;' the pregnancy still 'counts,' you know.

Answer 9

In this age of AIDS, promiscuous sex is unquestionably dangerous. Yet, many youths seem to view sex as little more than a harmless game. Some American youths, for example, blithely speak of “hooking up”—a harmless-sounding euphemism for casual sex. They talk about having “a friend with benefits”—a sexual partner who makes no emotional demands.
Particularly distressing was a report in the newspaper USA Today: “Increasing numbers of the country’s youngest teens . . . are having oral sex. . . . Kids have convinced themselves that ‘this is not really sex.’” According to one survey of 10,000 girls, “eighty percent said they are virgins, but 25% had had oral sex. And 27% described that act as ‘something you do with a guy for fun.’”
This Crosses All Racial Lines as well..

Answer 10

Actually, statistics state that Hispanic teens are the highest in this category. Black teens have been on a steady decline, contrary to propaganda.
http://teenpregnancy.org/resources/data/genlfact.asp
http://siecus.org/pubs/fact/fact0010.html
http://kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=36993
http://rwjf.org/programareas/resources/...?filename=038958.htm&pid=1144
http://womenshealthchannel.com/teenpregnancy/index.shtml