City Retains High Teen Birth Rate

#2 Again! Milwaukee has remained at the top of national teen birth rates for more than a decade. That is in spite of a series of campaigns, the efforts of local committees and agencies, and an escalating effort to put teens on birth control methods that do not require their vigilant responsibility.

There are two basic reasons for this: Teens are having sex and some teens want to have babies.
Why can't we just say both of these are wrong? They are bad for the teen, for her family, for the community, and, most definitely, very bad for the babies. A vicious cycle is in place and it will take more than bus ads and PSAs to stop it.

Abstinence should be a cog in the wheel of solutions. It makes no sense that it does not receive greater emphasis. Telling teens to refrain from sex will never be the be-all and end-all--too many social and economic factors are at work. But without abstinence as the foundational principle of all other efforts, nothing else has, or will, work.

It is devastating that OIC will lose Milwaukee's largest federal abstinence grant. Although its program was in its very initial stages, management deficiencies and criminality will give an undeserved black eye to abstinence education here. In the right hands, that money could have gone a long way to lower birth rates by showing teens much better alternatives.

There has to be a payoff for doing the right thing--maybe its time to invest more in the teens willing to postpone sex in favor of their education, job training and career launch.