Pound Pup Legacy

Yesterday, hub-man read in the newspaper, recent studies show 1 in 4 U.S. teens have an STD.  This shocked him, especially since we have 1 teen and three more to go through this wonderful stage of "personal discovery" (and parental defiance).

According to a web-resource that lists the statistics of teen suicide, drinking/drug use, and eating disorders, the following information was also found:

Teen Pregnancy

• The teen birth rate has declined slowly but steadily from 1991 to 2001 with an overall decline of 26 percent for those aged 15 to 19.
• Nearly four in 10 young women become pregnant at least once before they reach the age of 20-nearly one million a year Eight in ten of these pregnancies are unintended and 79 percent are to unmarried teens.
• One of every 3 girls has had sex by age 16, 2 out of 3 by age 18. Two of 3 boys have had sex by age 18.
• Fewer than half of high school students have had sex.
• Teen mothers are less likely to complete high school, (only one-third receive a high school diploma) and more likely to end up on welfare (nearly 80 percent of unmarried teen mothers end up on welfare).
• The United States has the highest rates of teen pregnancy and births in the western industrialized world. Teen pregnancy costs the United States at least $7 billion annually.
• A majority of both girls and boys who are sexually active wish they had waited. Eight in ten girls and six in ten boys say they wish they had waited until they were older to have sex.
• The younger a teenaged girl is when she has sex for the first time, the more likely she is to have had unwanted or non-voluntary sex. Close to four in ten girls who had first intercourse at 13 or 14 report it was either non-voluntary or unwanted.

STDs

• Teens have higher rates of gonorrhea than do sexually active men and women aged 20-44.
• Every year 3 million teens--about 1 in 4 sexually active teens-get a Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD).
• Some studies show that up to 15% of sexually active teenage women are infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV), many with the type of HPV that is linked to cervical cancer.
• Chlamydia is more common among teens than among older men and women.

HIV/AIDS

• Twenty-five percent of U.S. high school students said that they were under the influence of alcohol or drugs when they last engaged in sexual activity.
• Half of all new infections are thought to occur in people under 25.
• Almost 50% of teachers who teach about HIV/AIDS reported spending only one or two class periods on the topic.
• In a recent survey, 87% of young Americans said they do not believe they are at risk for HIV infection.
• Each year 3,000 adolescents contract sexually transmitted diseases, which is about one in four sexually experienced teens.
• Young Americans between the ages of 13 and 24 are still contracting HIV at the rate of 2 per hour.

http://whs.wsd.wednet.edu/Faculty/Lynch/sadd/statistics.html

The STD numbers found in this page, which was last updated in 2003, reflect the same numbers used in "a new study conducted by the CDC".  How new is this information hitting yesterday's newspapers?

This got me curious about  the most recent CDC statistics/studies done on teen pregnancy and birth-rates in each state.  How recent is the information, and is there any correlation between birth-rate and private adoption services offered to "high-risk" pregnant teens within any given state?  After all, if babies are put at a premium price  for private adoption agencies, isn't it possible some agencies have recruiters working extra hard to find American babies to sell for themselves?