Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 15, 1993 TAG: 9302150281
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A FEEBLE RESPONSE TO TEEN PREGNANCY
NO THANKS to the House Appropriations Committee for putting in its budget bill $800,000 to combat teen-age pregnancy. That's not nearly enough to address a problem that, by some estimates, is costing Virginia taxpayers $200 million a year.And no thanks to the Senate Finance Committee, either. It failed even to put a like amount in its budget bill, thus rendering the $800,000 vulnerable in a House-Senate conference. Before the '93 assembly adjourns later this month, the funding could be deleted altogether.
This would leave a comprehensive teen-pregnancy prevention program once again unfunded by the state - an absurd, wasteful, shameful state of affairs.
That the House panel included $800,000 (to conduct four pilot prevention programs around the state) is progress of a sort. The tiniest sort. Also, both budget committees have proposed spending some for a Norplant contraceptive program for welfare recipients.
Last year, legislators completely ignored appeals from public-health officials, social workers and countless volunteers who are trying to deal with this $200-million-a-year problem. (That's roughly what it costs taxpayers to support Virginia's teen-age girls who get pregnant - at the rate of 55 a day - and the 80 percent of their babies who are born out of wedlock.)
Still, the $800,000 is but a fraction of the $5.8 million that Lt. Gov. Don Beyer's anti-poverty commission initially said is needed to conduct a meaningful prevention program. Legislators' tightfistedness will also hamper the effectiveness of a related prevention effort announced this week by the private Virginia Hospital Association.
At the urging of Carilion Health System's president, Tom Robertson of Roanoke, the hospital association will donate $200,000 to purchase and adapt for Virginia a highly acclaimed multimedia campaign developed by the state of Maryland as part of its teen-pregnancy prevention program.
Virginia television stations and other media reportedly are ready to donate many million dollars' worth more in prime-time air and space to blanket the state with messages that promote abstinence for teens.
Such a media campaign - similar to ones that dissuade young people from drugs, drunken driving, smoking and other destructive behavior - could be a key component in a teen-pregnancy prevention program.
But it will not do the job by itself. It has to be reinforced by local-resource efforts - including counseling and education - in the schools, public-health and welfare agencies and by private groups such as Planned Parenthood and Better Beginnings Coalitions.
It is mainly for such local-resource programs that the anti-poverty commission - and, in 1992, Gov. Wilder's Council on Teen Pregnancy Prevention - asked the assembly to make a modest commitment of state funds.
The House committee's $800,000 is not modest - it's miserly. And, assuming it survives the budgeting process, this might be the sadly ironic result: The media campaign could raise the awareness of at-risk teens across Virginia that they need help - with low self-esteem, loneliness or other emotional problems that often lead to sexual promiscuity. But the state would effectively deny thousands of young people a place to turn for that help.
This is shortsighted, to say the least. Teen pregnancy is producing social and economic havoc. It is the surest predictor of poverty and infant health difficulties. Children of adolescent mothers sometimes are neglected or abused. Pregnant teens often drop out of school and grow dependent on welfare. Or they may choose the traumatic recourse of abortion.
Meanwhile, the assembly blithely denies a few million dollars that could save many millions more in yearly costs to taxpayers.
The Virginia Hospital Association is to be commended for recognizing the folly of letting the problem of teen pregnancy run on rampantly, without a major effort to reverse its course. It is not too late for the '93 assembly to do likewise.