May 4--The term "unintended pregnancy" came up a lot Monday morning at a community meeting held at Colorado State University-Pueblo. It was even on the flyer: "Help Prevent Unintended Pregnancy in Pueblo!"
But Sarah Ruybalid, community health services division director for the Pueblo City-County Health Department, that the real problem among the area's teenage girls may not be unintended pregnancies.
Ruybalid was the final speaker at the morning meeting that brought together representatives from government agencies, nonprofits and schools. She told the group that the Pueblo County commissioners had agreed to spend up to $50,000 on a new study here that would define the characteristics of teens who take steps to avoid pregnancy, whether through abstinence and serious efforts at contraception and those who don't, to get an idea of the factors that could reduce the growing number of unwed teen mothers.
"This is way bigger than teen pregnancy," Ruybalid said. "It involves our culture, or norms, our families."
Other speakers laid out statistics that backed that up. Toni Panetta political director of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado, which set up the organization Prevention First Colorado, said that 58 percent of sexually active teens don't use contraceptives. Lori Casillas, executive director of the Colorado Organization on Adolescent Pregnancy, Parenting and Prevention, pointed out that in 2004, 20 percent of the teenagers giving birth were having their second child.
Ruybalid said that the Pueblo study will concentrate on cultural and family environments that contribute to the problem, developing a unique picture of Pueblo's particular challenges.
That theme came through from earlier speakers, too, who told the close to 200 people attending that it's not enough to offer a sex education program if it doesn't address the culture and background of a community. They also emphasized that prescribing contraceptives also doesn't guarantee a solution.
Casillas said of condoms, for example, "Putting it on the table and not talking about it isn't going to work."
There was general agreement that schools should do more to provide evidence-based sex education programs, something the speakers agreed meant a combination of both abstinence and information on contraception and disease prevention instead of just abstinence as some church groups have urged.
Getting young women to think about their future as more than just being a girlfriend and mother, also is vital Casillas said. "We have to develop future aspirations." A third of girls who drop out of school say it's because of the pressure of parenthood, she said.
Panetta also said that some of the best agencies are school-based health centers, if they had the ability to fill as well as write prescriptions for contraceptives. In communities with those services, she said, the reduction in teen pregnancies has been better than 90 percent.
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