Seven percent of 14 to 17 years old teen girls who become pregnant have been impregnated by an adult. This statistic, drawn from a late 1980’s study in Phoenix, caught my eye the other day. It surprised me that it was so high 26 years ago. Teens today are much more sexually active than they were back then and they start at an earlier age so the figure is probably much higher now. Maybe the proportion is the same even if the numbers are higher, but I doubt it.
I could not find the exact number of children in the age group 14 to 17 in a quick search, but the number of females ages 15 to 19 in the U.S. totals 10,700,000. Applying the numbers to this age group should give us some insight into the problem. Black teens in this age group become pregnant at the rate of 41 per 1000. For all ethnic groups the rate is 18 per 1000. Since there are 1,348,200 black female teens, the number who become pregnant is about 55,000. For the remaining teens in this age group the total pregnancies is approximate 137,000, making the total pregnancies for both groups about 192,000. In order to get an equivalent approximation, we have to reduce this figure by 1/5 leaving approximate total pregnancies for the 14 to 17 year age group of 153,000. Seven percent of this is 10,710.
That’s 10,710 teen girls in just this age group just this past year who were impregnated by an adult. Of course that’s a small fraction of the children in that age group who are being abused in any given year. And this is only one small segment of the total child population who actually became pregnant. (more...)
No comments:
Post a Comment