Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 16, 1994 TAG: 9402250026
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Do state lawmakers think the futures of these children are worth at least $4.79 apiece? They ought to.
That's the amount the General Assembly is being asked to spend, statewide, over the next two years for teen-pregnancy prevention programs. Per kid, it's about the price of three pairs of tube socks at a discount store.
Compare that, please, to the $19,420 per year that the state will spend to support each inmate in its prisons - and that doesn't include the cost of building the places.
Compare it to the approximately $1,003 per month per case that the state spends to support some 190,000 children and their mothers, including many teen- age mothers, who qualify for Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
A piddling $4.79 per teen, for a total of $4 million in the next two-year budget of about $32 billion.
You might assume legislators would jump at the bargain. Jump they should - for a chance to reduce the size of a problem now helping to fill prisons and swell AFDC rolls.
But legislators don't always recognize a bargain when they see it. The $4 million teen-pregnancy prevention package was recommended to the '93 General Assembly by Lt. Gov. Don Beyer's anti-poverty commission and the Virginia Council on Teen Pregnancy Prevention, which studied the issue for more than a year. The legislature appropriated a mere $600,000 for three pilot programs in Norfolk, Alexandria and Richmond. Roanoke, with the highest teen-pregnancy rate in the state, got not a penny.
Another push for the $4 million is now under way. Planned Parenthood of the Blue Ridge has collected more than 3,600 signatures, mostly from the Roanoke Valley, on petitions urging the assembly to reconsider.
Other Virginia communities with a stake in this problem - and virtually every community has one - may want to conduct similar petition drives. If enough signatures are sent to Richmond, enough letters delivered and phone calls made to senators and delegates, perhaps lawmakers will get it through their heads:
The public wants action on teen pregnancy. The public knows that prevention is not a cost, but an investment.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994
by CNB