The national teenage birth rate crept up for the second year in a row according to the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics. Between 2005 and 2007, the last year for which statistics are available, the birthrate for girls and women age 19 and under increased by 5 percent.
The rate of teens giving birth had dropped 34 percent between 1991 and 2004. In 2007, 42.5 babies were born for every 1,000 teens.
"We certainly don't want to see this upward trend continue," CDC chief of reproductive statistics Stephanie J. Ventura, MA told reporters from the website WebMD. "Even though we have made a lot of progress in this area, we still have a long way to go. The birth rate among teens in the U.S. still much higher than in most other developed countries."
According to the Washington State Department of Health, Washington has boasted a lower-than-national teen pregnancy rate for more than a decade. In 2005, the most recent statistics available, the rate of pregnancy among Washington girls 15 to 17 years of age was 15 out of ever 1,000. That year, one in 67 girls who became pregnant had a baby (1,966 births). Of those giving birth, 16 percent had a prior pregnancy. (Source: "Adolescent Pregnancy and Childbearing" published by Washington State Department of Health, 2007).
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