In an Op-Ed published on Alternet, Laura Rosbrow writes, “We celebrated the 50th anniversary of the pill recently and many have written about its power to reduce poverty” yet, “why have teenage pregnancies increased since 2005?”
Laura references the work of Rocio Cordoba from California Latinas for Reproductive Justice (a Women’s Foundation Grant Partner) in demonstrating the effectiveness of access to contraception in decreasing teenage pregnancy. “However, providing meaningful opportunities is an often-overlooked strategy to decreasing teenage pregnancy. Ironically, in Kathryn Edin and Maria Kafalas’s 2005 nuanced account, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage hundreds of poor teenage mothers from diverse ethnic backgrounds are interviewed and many say they are indifferent about getting pregnant because a baby brings the “purpose…and the order that young women feel have been so sorely lacking.”
Read the rest of Laura’s Op-Ed.
Laura Rosbrow is the collaboration coordinator for the Eva Gunther Foundation, which supports and fosters the creative pursuits of young women from low-income backgrounds.