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According to a September 2008 press release from the
SC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, following 14 years of successful declines in teen pregnancy rates, the SC Department
of Health and Environmental Control has reported an increase in the number of pregnancies to teens of all races in SC.
According
to the 2006 statistics, 10,604 girls in SC ages 10 to19 became pregnant. Since 2004, the rate of teen pregnancy in SC increased
from 33.1 per 1,000 to 35.9 per 1,000 (or 8%); the number of teen pregnancies also increased from 9,543 to 10,604 (or 11%).
The
SC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy reports that a SC teen becomes pregnant every 58 minutes.
According to the
SC Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), on an average day in SC, 20 teenagers give birth.
According
to the most recent data from Kids Count (an initiative of the Anne E. Casey Foundation that tracks the status of children
in the US), SC ranks among the worst states for percent of births to females under 20 (44th). Kids Count reports that SC's
2005/2006 teen birth rate (a rate of 51 per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19) is considerably higher than the United States as
a whole (a rate of 40.5 per 1,000 for ages 15 to 19).
The SC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy's 2008 Fact Sheet states
that the rate of repeat teen pregnancy in SC has remained stagnant for the past 10 years, that nearly one in three SC teen
pregnancies are to teens who are already parenting, and that 20% of teen mothers will have a second baby within three years
of the birth of the first. Of the estimated 9,147 teen pregnancies to girls ages 10 to 19 in SC, 2,496 were repeat pregnancies.
SC
ranks 47th worst in the nation for both infant mortality rate per 1,000 births (9.4, compared to the US rate of 6.9) and percent
of low birth weight babies (10.2%, compared to the US at 8.2%) [SC Kids Count Data Book, 2007].
In SC in 2005, 5,885
babies (10.2% of all babies in the state) were born with low birth weight [SC Kids Count, 2008].
Teen mothers under
age 20 have a 29% higher rate of very low birth weight infants, and a 34% higher rate of very premature infants than non-teen
mothers [DHEC].
In 2006, 13% of teen mothers (ages 10 to 19) gave birth to very low or moderately low birth weight
babies. In 2005, the SC county with the highest number of low-weight live births to girls ages 15 to 19 was Charleston (84).
Charleston also had the highest number of low-weight births to girls under age 15. The low-weight births to girls under
age 15 in Charleston County accounted for 19% of all 26 low-weight births to girls under age 15 in the entire state. The
number of very low-weight births in Charleston in 2005 was the highest in the state (117). [The South Carolina Campaign to
Prevent Teen Pregnancy]
In SC overall, there were 10,604 pregnancies to girls ages 10 to 19 (a rate per 1,000 of 35.9)
in 2006, which is an increase from 9,718 (a rate per 1,000 of 33.7) in 2005. This means that of the 46 counties in SC, 13.3%
of these 2006 teen pregnancies to girls ages 10 to 19 were in the Tri-County area of Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester
[DHEC 2008].
Also troubling is that of the six SC zip codes with the highest numbers of teen pregnancies from 2004
to 2005, four are in the Tri-County area: 29406, 29483, 29405, and 29445. And while teen pregnancy generally decreased in
SC from 2004 to 2005, in Charleston zip codes 29405 and 29403, teen pregnancy actually increased from 2004 to 2005 [SC Campaign's
2008 Fact Sheet].
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