February 3, 2010

Teenage girls in Charlottesville are getting pregnant at a rate twice the statewide average. Statistics show 42 teen pregnancies per every 1,000 10 to 17-year-olds in Charlottesville, that's a 4.2% rate. That number is only 24 per 1,000 10 to 17-year-olds statewide, or a 2.4% pregnancy rate.

Movies like Juno shoe the lighthearted side of teen pregnancy, but Peggy Willis, a labor and delivery nurse at Martha Jefferson Hospital, sees the flip side.

"Not only can you often feel saddened by how the life of the teenager will change because of the pregnancy, but also how the life of the new child coming into the family may change the whole family dynamic," said Willis.

Willis says she's seen new mothers in Charlottesville as young as 12 years old, and adds that about 5% of all her patients are teens. However, before teens meet Peggy in the delivery room, some visit one of the Pregnancy Centers of Central Virginia. Two of the four central Virginia locations can be found in our area, one in Charlottesville and another in Albemarle County on Greenbrier Drive.

"A high percentage of [pregnant teens] come back because they're comfortable. They feel that they're cared for here, that they're loved," said Ron Schneider, Director of the Pregnancy Centers of Central Virginia.

That outpouring of love and support is what brings students to the doorstep. In fact, Schneider says the Greenbrier location averages 150 students a year from Albemarle County High School, which is located within walking distance of the center.

Worth Your Wait, a non-profit abstinence program in Greene County, conducted research and found that one-in-five teens with sexual experience had their first encounter before the age of 12.

"They're still trying to say, 'well I'm a virgin technically. Having sex can only be intercourse.' But they don't think of oral sex for example," said Anna LaBounty.

So what leads to these sexual acts? LaBounty pinpoints the high number of single-parent households in central Virginia, concluding that teens without a mother or father figure are often susceptible to risky behaviors like sex.

"With the lack of real parental supervision in many cases, they're getting messages from their friends, they're grasping it in the media, they're hearing it in music, and these have become their role models," said LaBounty.

While these teen pregnancy numbers are raising some eyebrows, Dyan Aretakis, of the University of Virginia Teen Health Center, calls them nothing more than a blip on the radar.

"There's been an incline, but it's not anywhere close to where it was in 1998 or 1960 for that matter. The increase between 2007 and 2008 was three total births, so it went from 10 births to 13 and that drove the rate up. So, that's a pretty small number," said Aretakis.

Aretakis says fewer teens across the region are having babies and she credits contraception and education programs for the decline. The obvious goal, she says, is zero teen pregnancies.

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