Texas...You're Number One

Awesome sauce..this is the info I needed the other day when I wrote about the stupid teen birth rate. the other day I said something like...the teen birth rate is down, in fact lowest in decades, but there is a war on the whys and hows. Of course Team Reasonable thinks it's because of access to contraception-knowledge-n-stuff, and they think it is because "teens just aren't interested in sex like back in the day (meaning that stupid Christian abstinence is working. not)."

Well, the chart above says a million gazillion words. The bible belt-y areas have the highest teen birth rate and as you leave the south it gets lower. It looks like ripple in a pond or something. It looks like Texas, the ones that brag that they are the most pious of all states because they have the most churches per capita, is the hot bed of teen prego's. I recall years ago that Lubbock Texas ( didn't Buddy Holly come from Lubbock(1)) is source of the ripple in the pond within Texas. Sheez...

Teenage births remain high in more religious states. The correlation between teenage birthrates and the percentage of adults who say they are “very religious” is considerable (.69). The 2009 study posited that attitudes toward contraception play a significant role, noting that "religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself."

"Overall, teen birthrates remain highest in America’s most religious, politically conservative and blue-collar states (The Atlantic)."

Good luck with that teen ladies of Texas.


* Article

* When I first wrote about this on the 10th.

(1) One of the first records I have evah bought, and yes, that is records, was the soundtrack to the Buddy Holly Story.