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July 14, 2005
Romney vetoes fund increase for sex ed.
Jeremy Schwab
With teen pregnancy rates increasing in some communities,
the Democrat-dominated state Legislature sent Republican Gov.
Mitt Romney a budget that doubled funds for teen pregnancy prevention.
But Romney vetoed the extra $1 million expenditure, prompting
advocates for pregnancy prevention programs to wonder where they
will find funding.
Recent cuts have decimated funding for teen pregnancy prevention.
In 2001, the state budgeted $5.5 million on counseling, sexual
education and other community programming to combat teen pregnancy.
Last year, following cuts prompted in part by a state revenue
shortfall, the state spent just $990,000 on teen pregnancy prevention.
Boston received no funding last year for teen pregnancy prevention,
after receiving a high water mark of $367,000 from the state in
2001. Although the city has more cases of teen pregnancy than
any other community in the state, it has a lower rate of teen
pregnancy, and funding is given out first to communities with
the highest rates.
It is unclear whether any of the additional $1 million proposed
by the Legislature would have gone to Boston, because cities and
towns must first apply for any money allocated.
Susan Lovelace, executive director of the Massachusetts Alliance
on Teen Pregnancy, panned Romney’s move to cut teen pregnancy
prevention funds.
“I don’t know why he’d choose to veto teen pregnancy
prevention funding in the same year we have seen teen birth rates
in various communities go up,” she said.
Lovelace notes that teen pregnancy rates had gone down 36 percent
since the state began funding prevention in 1990. Since funding
cuts hit in 2001, the progress has apparently halted.
Between 2002 and 2003, the most recent year for which data is
available, the overall teen birth did not decrease after decreasing
every year since 1997. The rate increased in Holyoke, Springfield,
Lawrence, Southbridge and Worcester in 2003, although it decreased
slightly in Boston.
Black and Latino teenage girls are much more likely than their
white peers to become pregnant. Of the 4,695 young women under
20 who became pregnant in 2003, 44.5 percent were Latina, 15.7
percent were black and 34.5 percent were white. Latinos account
for just seven percent of 10-19 year-olds in the state, blacks
account for five percent and whites for 80 percent.
Factors that lead teens to have unprotected sex are mainly psychological,
said Lovelace. Teenagers may feel undervalued by their communities
or may see little hope for their own economic futures, and so
become ambivalent about becoming pregnant or having unprotected
sex.
The programs the state funds teach both abstinence and contraception
use, according to Lovelace. Curriculums vary, but all programs
must be based on models proven to be effective.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has funded a group called A
Woman’s Concern to the tune of an estimated $500,000 to
teach abstinence only pregnancy prevention to Boston-area school
children, said Lovelace.
“The abstinence only programs not only do not work but put
kids at more risk because they are more ambivalent about using
condoms and at much higher risk of contracting HIV and AIDS,”
she said.
Former President Bill Clinton began the abstinence only program,
but Bush has increased its funding dramatically. In 1998 under
Clinton, abstinence only programming received $56 million, while
this year the federal government is spending $170 million on abstinence
only programming.
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