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Teen Birth Rate Up in 26 States in 2006

Highest rates in South, Southwest; lowest rates in Northeast, government reports
Posted January 7, 2009

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 7 (HealthDay News) -- The teen birth rate in the United States increased in 26 of the 50 states in 2006, representing almost every region of the country, according to a new government report.

Back in December 2007, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the teen birth rate for the entire nation had increased for the first time in 15 years in 2006 -- from 40.5 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 in 2005 to 41.9 in 2006. Those statistics were based on 99 percent of all birth certificates in the United States for 2006, the agency said.

The latest report, released Wednesday by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, includes state-by-state teen birth rate statistics based on all birth certificates issued in 2006.

The report revealed that teen birth rates were highest in the South and Southwest, with the highest rate recorded in Mississippi (68.4), followed by New Mexico (64.1) and Texas (63.1).

Teen birth rates for 2006 were lowest in the Northeast, with the lowest rates in New Hampshire (18.7), Vermont (20.8), and Massachusetts (21.3), according to the report, Births: Final Data for 2006.

The only states reporting a decrease in teen birth rates between 2005 and 2006 were North Dakota, Rhode Island and New York, the report said.

The birth rate for teens 15 to 19 years old increased 3 percent in 2006, interrupting the 14-year period of continuous decline from 1991 through 2005. Only the rate for the youngest teens declined in 2006, to 0.6 per 1,000 females aged 10 to 14 years. The rates for teens 15 to 17 and 18 to 19 years old rose 3 to 4 percent each. These increases followed declines of 45 percent and 26 percent, respectively, in the rates between 1991 and 2005, according to the report.

Between 2005 and 2006, birth rates increased 3 percent to 5 percent each for non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, and American Indian or Alaska Native teens and 2 percent for Hispanic teens. The rate for Asian or Pacific Islander teens was unchanged, the report said.

More information

For more on teen pregnancy visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
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A Negro Could be President in 40 Years
A Prophetic Robert F. Kennedy Quote From 1968



He gave a speech to the Voice of America all around the world 40 years ago. And despite what was going on in the country, particularly in Alabama, Bobby Kennedy said this: Things are 'moving so fast in race relations a Negro could be president in 40 years.' This is in 1968, we're now in 2008. '`There's no question about it,' the attorney general said. `In the next 40 years a Negro can achieve the same position that my brother has.' .... Kennedy said that prejudice exists and probably will continue to ... `But we have tried to make progress and we are making progress. We are not going to accept the status quo.'

- Robert F. Kennedy, Washington Post May 27, 1968

The story of American democracy is often told as the steady expansion of voting but history has not yet caught up with one group—former felons. In the early American political system, the right to vote was reserved for white males over the age of 21 who owned land. In 1920, after the passage of the 19th Amendment, it was extended to women nationwide. The right to vote was technically extended to African-Americans in 1868 with the passage of the 14th Amendment and effectively enforced with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1971, Congress lowered the legal voting age to 18. Yet, in all but two states, citizens with felony convictions are prohibited from voting either permanently or temporarily. The United States is the only country that permits permanent disenfranchisement of felons even after completion of their sentences.

Obama Calls for More Responsibility
From Black Fathers
By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: June 16, 2008



CHICAGO — Addressing a packed congregation at one of the city’s largest black churches, Senator Barack Obama on Sunday invoked his own absent father to deliver a sharp message to black men, saying “we need fathers to recognize that responsibility doesn’t just end at conception.”


In an address that was striking for its bluntness and where he chose to give it, Mr. Obama directly addressed one of the most delicate topics confronting black leaders: how much responsibility absent fathers bear for some of the intractable problems afflicting black Americans. Mr. Obama noted that “more than half of all black children live in single-parent households,” a number that he said had doubled since his own childhood.

“Too many fathers are M.I.A., too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes,” Mr. Obama said to a chorus of approving murmurs from the audience. “They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.”

Accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, who sat in the front pew, Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, laid out his case in stark terms that would be difficult for a white candidate to make, telling the mostly black audience not to “just sit in the house watching ‘SportsCenter,’ ” and to stop praising themselves for mediocre accomplishments.

“Don’t get carried away with that eighth-grade graduation,” he said, bringing many members of the congregation to their feet, applauding. “You’re supposed to graduate from eighth grade.”

His themes have also been sounded by the comedian Bill Cosby, who has stirred debate among black Americans by bluntly speaking about an epidemic of fatherlessness in African-American families while suggesting that some blacks use racism as a crutch to explain the lack of economic progress.

Mr. Obama did not take his Father’s Day message to Trinity United Church of Christ, where he resigned as a member in May after a series of disputes over controversial remarks by the church’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Instead, he chose the 20,000-member Apostolic Church of God, a vast brick structure on the South Side near Lake Michigan. The church’s pastor, Byron Brazier, is an Obama supporter.

The address was not Mr. Obama’s first foray into the issue. On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama has frequently returned to the topic of parenting and personal responsibility, particularly for low-income black families. Speaking in Texas in February, Mr. Obama told the mostly black audience to take responsibility for the education and nutrition of their children, and lectured them for feeding their children “cold Popeyes” for breakfast.

“I know how hard it is to get kids to eat properly,” Mr. Obama said at the time.

The remarks Sunday were Mr. Obama’s first since he claimed the nomination that have addressed the problems confronting blacks in a comprehensive and straightforward way. While Mr. Obama’s remarks were directed at a black, churchgoing audience, his campaign hopes they resonate among white social conservatives in a race where these voters may be up for grabs.

On Friday, Mr. Obama said he would co-sponsor a bill, with Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, that his campaign said would address the “national epidemic of absentee fathers.” If passed, the legislation would increase enforcement of child support payments and strengthen services for domestic violence prevention.

“We need families to raise our children,” he said at the service on Sunday. “We need fathers to recognize that responsibility doesn’t just end at conception. That doesn’t just make you a father. What makes you a man is not the ability to have a child. Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”

Mr. Obama spoke of the burden that single parenthood placed on his mother, who raised him with the help of his maternal grandparents.

“I know the toll it took on me, not having a father in the house,” he continued. “The hole in your heart when you don’t have a male figure in the home who can guide you and lead you. So I resolved many years ago that it was my obligation to break the cycle — that if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father to my children.”

But Mr. Obama also acknowledged his own flaws as a father, citing the breakneck schedule of the campaign and the rare days he spends with his children.

“I say this knowing that I have been an imperfect father,” he said, “knowing that I have made mistakes and I’ll continue to make more, wishing that I could be home for my girls and my wife more than I am right now.”

Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and an Obama supporter, said he welcomed not only the message the speech sent to black Americans, but also how it laid bare Mr. Obama’s own struggles growing up and, now, as the father of two children.

“I have been saying for some time now that he needs to talk more about his life experiences and what it means to be raised by a single mother,” Mr. Clyburn said. “He opened up.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton called the remarks on absent black fathers “courageous and important,” but cautioned that Mr. Obama’s words would not be embraced by all segments of the black community.

“There are a lot of those who will say that he should not be airing dirty laundry, those that will say he’s beating up on the victims,” Mr. Sharpton said in a telephone interview. “This will not be something that will be unanimously applauded, but I think that not discussing it is not going to make it go away.”

The Obama campaign added the speech to Mr. Obama’s schedule on Saturday, when he returned to Chicago after a campaign swing through Pennsylvania and Ohio. Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, took the day off from campaigning, but met privately in Washington with Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister.

The church did not publicize Mr. Obama’s visit in advance, and carried no mention of it on the its Web site.

But word had clearly gotten out, and by 11 a.m., as a musician warmed up on the timpani, thousands of people had filed through metal detectors at the church entrance and filled the pews, saving seats for latecomers with pocketbooks and hymnals. Even those who arrived an hour before the service milled around the church searching for empty seats.

Mr. Obama sprinkled his roughly 30-minute address with moments of levity. He said that when he asked his wife why Mother’s Day produced so much more “hoopla” than Father’s Day, she reminded him of his special status.

“She said, ‘Let me tell you, every day is Father’s Day,’ ” he said. “ ‘Every day you’re getting away with something. You’re running for president.’ ”

Zimbabwe, What Might Have Been
Joshua Nkomo A Partner in the Revolution


The first leader of the Rhodesian nationalist movement was Joshua Nqabuko Nyangolo Nkomo. He had been elected
president of the newly formed African National Congress on
1 September 1957.

Joshua Nkomo (1917–1999)

Zimbabwean trade unionist and politician, vice president 1990–99. As president of ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People's Union) from 1961, he was a leader of the black nationalist movement against the white Rhodesian regime. He was a member of Robert Mugabe's cabinet 1980–82 and from 1987.

After completing his education in South Africa, Joshua Nkomo became a welfare officer on Rhodesian Railways and later organizing secretary of the Rhodesian African Railway Workers' Union. He entered politics in 1950, and was president of the African National Congress (ANC) in southern Rhodesia 1957–59. In 1961 he created ZAPU, of which he was president.

Arrested along with other black African politicians, he was kept in detention 1963–74. After his release he joined forces with Robert Mugabe as a joint leader of the Patriotic Front in 1976, opposing the white-dominated regime of Ian Smith. Nkomo took part in the Lancaster House Conference, which led to Rhodesia's independence as the new state of Zimbabwe, and became a cabinet minister and vice president.

Dr. King on War! (5yrs and counting)