More Teen Girls Postponing Sex
Use of contraception amongst sexually active teens also increasing.
4, 2012 (MedPage Today) — The proportion of teenage girls who have
started having sex has gone down since the mid-1990s, according to the CDC.
From 2006 to 2010, 57
percent of girls ages 15 to 19 said they had never had vaginal intercourse, up
from 49 percent in 1995, Crystal Pirtle Tyler, PhD, of the agency's Division of
Reproductive Health, and colleagues reported in the May 4 issue of Morbidity
and Mortality Weekly Report.
And those girls who were
sexually active became more
likely to use effective contraception: About 60 percent reported
current use of highly effective contraceptive methods, including intrauterine
devices or hormonal methods with or without a condom. That was an increase from
47 percent in 1995.
Both trends have likely
contributed to the continuing decline in the teen birth rate in the U.S., which
was 34.3 births per 1,000 females in 2010, a relative 44 percent lower than the
rate in 1990.
Nevertheless, teen birth
rates remain higher in the U.S. than in other developed countries and the
federal government has set a goal of reducing the rate by another 10 percent by
That "will require a
comprehensive approach to sexual and reproductive health that includes
continued promotion of delayed
sexual debut and increased use of highly effective contraception
among sexually experienced teens," the authors wrote.
To explore trends in sexual
experience and contraceptive use among females ages 15 to 19, Tyler and
colleagues looked at data from the National Survey of Family Growth collected
in 1995, 2002, and 2006 to 2010. The NSFG is an in-person, household survey.
Although there were no
differences based on race or ethnicity in the proportion of girls who had
started having sex, there was a disparity in the use of highly effective contraceptives
among those who were sexually active.
Non-Hispanic white girls
were more likely than non-Hispanic black and Hispanic girls to use highly
effective contraceptives (66 percent versus 47 percent and 54 percent) and less
likely to use nothing at all (15 percent versus 26 percent and 24 percent). And
since 1995, the number of black teens not using any contraceptives actually
grew more frequent.
The authors noted that use
of condoms is inconsistent among teens, and that pairing condom use with highly
effective contraceptive methods should be encouraged.
"Dual use of condoms
with a highly effective method of contraception can provide pregnancy
protection with the added benefit of preventing sexually transmitted
infections, including infection with HIV,
which affects teens disproportionately," they wrote.
They acknowledged that the
analysis was limited by self-reported contraceptive use and the lack of data on
girls younger than 15.