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I write about this, however, not because of teenage pregnancy, but because I have noticed a rise in unplanned pregnancy in general. When I was in college, I can remember two isolated incidents when I encountered a fellow pregnant student. Because of this, I chose not to stay at my college while I was pregnant, and instead opted to take some transfer credits closer to home. This was not the only reason I decided to move closer to home, my doctor was there, and my husband was able to find a higher paying job in the DC area than in rural Virginia.
I did not visit my college while I was pregnant, but I did make several trips once my son was born. While I was on campus I began to notice a lot of young women with strollers. I had never seen this on my college campus before. I talked to several of the women, and all of them were college students who chose to keep their children. I was astonished. The last time I had been at my college, the idea of seeing students pushing baby strollers around seemed absurd. Then suddenly, all of 9 months later, here I was seeing several women in my position. When I came back several weeks ago for graduation, I could not believe the number of women I saw carrying around babies while wearing their graduation gowns.
Obviously, my observations are not the same as a scientific survey, but I can't help but wonder about all of this. Was there a bum batch of birth control circulating rural Virginia (or for that matter, the country?) all of last year? Are more women choosing to keep their children now that the internet has made it more possible than ever to hear of other women who have been in their position? Are movies like Juno and Knocked Up making women think twice before terminating? Giving birth in your early twenties is a far cry from 17, but there are still many things that would be more easily accomplished sans child. The highest rate of abortions occur in women between the ages of 20 and 24. And this makes sense. Your early twenties seems like a perfectly fine and mature age to begin sexual activity, but not necessarily the best time to have a child. While the pill's 99% accuracy (if used flawlessly, which, let's face it, a good percentage of college students don't) in preventing pregnancy seems like great odds, that's still essentially 1 in 100. At my university there are about 8,000 women, about 5,000 of whom (if not more) are sexually active and on the pill. If 1 in 100 of those women are to become pregnant, that's 50 pregnancies. Statistics show the woman will likely terminate, so why have I seen so many women between 20 and 24 with babies lately? I have a hard time imagining they were all in the same situation as me (stable relationship, steady income, 9 credits shy of a degree, etc), so what is going on?
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