In giving birth, a woman has a defenseless, totally dependent child to care for. She will be the greatest single influence on how that child grows and develops into an adult.
Under ideal circumstances, the mother and father will together provide their child with a good home, one in which the child is well-nourished both physically and mentally.
Often that traditional nuclear family is not the case these days. Families are blended, or the parent may be single. Still, children can be raised in those environments and grow up to excel.
But the odds against the child stack much more heavily when the mother is a child herself.
That’s why numbers by the Georgia Campaign for Adolscent Pregnancy Prevention are alarming. In 2005, the state of Georgia ranked No. 42 — ninth worst in the nation — with 21,058 pregnancies to teens ages 15-19. That’s a rate of 67 pregnant teen girls out of every 1,000 in the state. Of those, 28.5 percent were repeat pregnancies.
Region 10 — the 14-county Southwest Georgia Public Health District that includes Metro Albany — ranked No. 8 in Georgia, or fifth worst in the state. Region 10 had 1,010 teen pregnancies, or a rate of 74.3 out of every 1,000 girls 15-19, including a repeat pregnancy rate of 26.4 percent.
With the larger community hospitals in the region located in their counties, Dougherty, Thomas and Colquitt were the counties where most of the region’s teen pregnancies occurred in 2005, with 348 in Dougherty, 123 in Colquitt and 106 in Thomas.
Metro Albany’s five counties ranked in this order: Lee County was No. 10 in the state with 46 pregnancies, a rate of 37.1 with 15.2 percent repeats; Worth, No. 39, 52 pregnancies, rate of 58, 25 percent repeats; Terrell County, No. 100, 31 pregnancies, rate of 82.7, no repeat information available; Dougherty, No. 109, 348 pregnancies, rate of 87.1, 25.6 percent repeats. Baker County had three pregnancies and did not rank statistically in the other categories.
In Region 10, Miller County had the best ranking, coming in at No. 5 with seven pregnancies, a rate of 33.5 and no repeat pregnancies, while Seminole County was worst at No. 130 with 31 pregnancies, a 98.1 rate and 19.4 percent repeat pregnancies.
You have to know the numbers to assess the situation, but what often gets lost in statistics is what’s behind the numbers — far too many cases of teens having babies and being unprepared to care for them.
Dr. Jacqueline Grant, director of the Southwest Georgia District and an obstetrician/gynecologist, noted Wednesday at an Albany meeting on teen pregnancies: “I see girls that come in with no prenatal care. They are 21 years old on their fifth pregnancy.”
It’s a vicious cycle. A girl unprepared to be a mother gives birth and raises a child who, when he or she gets older, is unprepared to deal with sexual relations and parenting, and is much more likely to repeat the bad judgment.
Somehow, this cycle has to be interrupted. It has consequences that reach beyond even the child born to a child. The impact is felt by the community as a whole, in its schools, its businesses, its medical facilities and, most unfortunately, in its jails and court systems.
For Metro Albany and Georgia as a whole to progress, this problem has to be addressed with real, practical solutions. Fortunately, organizations such as GCAPP, Phoebe Putney Hospital’s Network of Trust and state health agency are working toward that end.
This is an issue that needs widespread support. Every child deserves an opportunity to thrive, and to have the benefit of parents — mothers and fathers — who are ready to fulfill their roles.
— The Albany Herald Editorial Board