Teen childbearing and public policy

About 80 percent of teen pregnancies and 60 percent of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended at conception (Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1999; Henshaw, 1998). When adolescent females give birth, approximately 80 percent are unmarried, compared to 34 percent of women of all ages (Ventura, Mosher, Curtin, Abma, & Henshaw, 1999). Martial status is strongly related to pregnancy intentions and pregnancy outcomes; about three quarters of pregnancies that occurred in 1995 among married women resulted in live births, compared to less than half among unmarried women (Ventura et al., 1999).