New Mexico's not at the top on this one anymore (Portales: 2009, daycare)

[desert sun]

Highest teen pregnancy rate

-ATLANTA – Mississippi now has the nation's highest teen birth rate, displacing Texas and New Mexico for that lamentable title, a new federal report says. Mississippi's rate was more than 60 percent higher than the national average in 2006, according to new state statistics released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The teen birth rate for that year in Texas and New Mexico was more than 50 percent higher.

[Minathebrat]

I just read that! What surprised me was that there wasn't much of a difference between "average" and "high" birthrates..we're talking 60 something per 1000 teens as opposed to 40 something per 1000 teens. The average seemed high to me!

[dracul]

Disgusting and disturbing trend in any case. These children having children are literally "screwing away" and obliterating their futures. Times are hard enough and competition never fiercer for meaningful careers/educations. These kids may be placing living impediments before themselves that will forever reduce their chances for success in life. This is where education, often quite rare in poor/Southern communities, is so imperative. ....And then there is the little matter of community/state infrastructure that inevitably gets called in to help raise these poor children when young parents so often prove incapable of doing so.

[desert sun]

whats crazy is that every state in the dark red with the highest rates are all in the southern part of the United States except for Nevada. I wonder why?

[songinthewind7]

I lived in Tenn. for a few years and one of the local high schools was called hee haw high (as a joke)
The word was that something was wrong if you were NOT pregnant and dropping kids by the time you graduated. It was the normal thing to do.
With all the education and birth control, why would a teen want to be pregnant?
Very sad.
I don't think that a lot of southerners are the smartest apples on the tree and that's probably one of the causes for the teen pregnancy rate being so high. People in the midwest and northern states seem to be more into education.
Don't go throwing tomatoes at me because of what I've just said. I've lived a lot of places and this is what and how I see it.

[desert sun]

at the alternative school in Portales we use to joke that the mascot was a pregnant girl, anyways we also had a daycare in our high school which had only about 700 kids in it.

[domino]

The running joke about one of the girls' Catholic high schools in New Orleans is the only virgin there is the statue in the garden.