National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month: Poll Explores Latinos' attitudes about teen pregnancy

Teen pregnancy rates remain too high in Indiana and nationwide, but they’re declining — and we need to ensure that teens have access to sex education and birth control to help even more young people avoid getting pregnant as teenagers.

This month, for National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month, Planned Parenthood and the Center for Latino Adolescent and Family Health at New York University conducted scientific polling to explore Latinos’ attitudes about teen pregnancy. We found that Latinos see this as a major issue — and perceive teen pregnancy as even more important for Latinos than for other groups.

Fully 87 percent of Latinos in the survey said addressing teen pregnancy is a major priority — just as important as staying in school — and 51 percent said that it’s a higher priority for Latinos than for other groups.

Their concern is rooted in stark reality. Across the country, four in ten Latina teens will experience at least one pregnancy before the age of 20. Latinas are one and a half times more likely than white non-Latina teen moms to have another child while they’re still teenagers themselves.  In Indiana, 12 percent of all of the births to women under age 20 are to Latinas.

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