Beaufort County teen pregnancy drops 71 percent since 1991, new data show
Beaufort County now has the fourth-lowest teen birth rate in South Carolina, according to new data released this week by the S.C. Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
The new rate puts Beaufort County behind only three other counties -- all in the Charleston and Columbia area -- and represents a 71 percent drop in the local teen birth rate since 1991, data show.
That decrease bests the statewide 61-percent drop in the rate over that same period.
The drops follow extensive statewide efforts to promote abstinence-only and comprehensive sex education in public school districts, throughout local churches and among at-risk youth, leaders say.
In Beaufort County, increases to the educational programs for nearly all ages in the public schools has been a big part of the push, said April Fletcher-Clark, programs director for the Child Abuse Prevention Association in Beaufort.
"I think we're moving in the right direction, and the numbers speak for themselves," said Fletcher-Clark, who currently leads a series of comprehensive education programs for local at-risk children. "Education is the most powerful thing you can give youth. We must keep educating."
In 2014, the teen birth rate in Beaufort County was just over 20 per 1,000 females, while the statewide rate was 28.5 per 1,000, according to the data.
The biggest overall drop statewide has been among African American youth ages 15 to 17, according to the campaign.
"It is fair to say we have done a great job in our state educating young people about the importance of delaying pregnancy," said Forrest Alton, CEO of the state campaign. "There's been a great deal of energy and focus in South Carolina around an abstinence message, which of course is the first and best choice for all teens. We are also getting better at providing age-appropriate contraception for those youth who are having sex."
"This is the magic formula required to reduce teen pregnancy -- less sex and more contraception," he added.
Greater awareness and expanding resources for teens, especially those young women who do become pregnant, is part of the reason the numbers have dipped so low and will be the most effective way to keep them trending down, said Fletcher-Clark and Vera Bailey, executive director of the Pregnancy Center of the Lowcountry.
Bailey's center focuses on abstinence sex education, and her programs have been featured across Hilton Head Island at St. Francis Catholic School, First Baptist Church and Hilton Head Christian Academy, she said. But the center also provides care for young mothers in the weeks and months after their babies are born.
Raising awareness about those resources and expanding those services is still critical, especially as the numbers decline, not despite it, she said.
"Everybody has a boyfriend but they don't have any common sense," Bailey said. "We want to promote shepherds and not sheep."
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This story was originally published December 10, 2015 at 7:40 PM with the headline "Beaufort County teen pregnancy drops 71 percent since 1991, new data show."