This piece by Malika Saada Saar adds another consideration to discussions about the problem of teen pregnancy.
Says Saar:
Teen pregnancy isn’t simply about girls and boys being promiscuous, or lacking access to sex education or contraception. Too often teen pregnancy is about girls losing agency over their bodies because of the unbearable injuries of being sexually violated.
Underneath the discourse about the educational strategies needed to prevent teen pregnancy lies a much harder and complex issue: Violence in girls’ lives leaves them at risk for teen pregnancy—especially for girls of color. A significant correlation exists between childhood sexual abuse and teen pregnancy.
Saar quotes from Darkness to Light, an organization fighting child sexual abuse, which says that "an estimated 60% of teen first pregnancies are preceded by experiences of molestation, rape, or attempted rape. The average age of their offenders is 27 years."
As with many other causes of teen pregnancy the crux of the problem would seem to be at the family level. Only about 10% of abusers are strangers to the child victims.
This, of course, does not mean the abused child's family is to blame. But plainly there is much education needed to encourage stable, nurturing, safe family environments for children. Without such environments, it seems unrealistic to expect succeeding generations to be any more stable than those that have come before.
