14 DAY TRIAL // A new investigation in some of the United States' most religious regions has revealed that states that are highly religious, and where people are most conservative, tend to have higher teen-pregnancy and birth rates than other areas of the country. The researchers in charge of the paper say that a large number of causes for this phenomenon exists. On the one hand, people who adhere, for example, to a literal interpretation of the Bible tend to be less open to contraception for their kids. On the other hand, most of the time, parents fail to discourage and prevent relationships between teens.
“We conjecture that religious communities in the US are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging intercourse itself,” Drexel University College of Medicine study researcher Joseph Strayhorn, who also holds an appointment at the University of Pittsburgh, says. He highlights the fact that a strict cause-effect connection between religion and teen rates has not been determined statistically, but that the numbers clearly show some correlation exists, LiveScience reports.
The new study, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Reproductive Health, also shows that Mississippi is by far the leader in both the number of conservative, religious people, and teen-birth rates. The researchers believe that the incidence of Christian fundamentalism plays an important role in determining how many teenage girls have babies.
“The index of religiosity is tapping into more fundamentalist religious belief. I'm sure there are parts of New England that have very low teen birth rates, which have pretty high religious participation, but they're probably less conservative, less fundamentalist type of congregations,” Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health's John Santel says, and adds that he was not surprised by the results of the investigation.
Strayhorn explains that other factors may be at work too, especially in the Bible Belt. He believes that part of the results can be explained by the fact that people simply get married at a younger age in fundamentalist, Christian states. “In the south, there is a higher rate of marriage of teenagers. And one possible explanation is just that in the southern states, which are also more religious, people just get married earlier and have planned pregnancies and those have perfectly good outcomes,” he argues.