Ruth Institute Blog

by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law and Academic Advisory Board Member of the Ruth Institute.

This is the last in my series of columns on out of wedlock births.  By now you know that 4 in 10 U.S. births are nonmarital; this rises to 7 in 10 for African-American Women, and  5 in 10 for Hispanic women, our fastest growing minority population. Women in their 20s and 30s account for the lion’s share of the trend. [1]  Reactions to our predicament are suitably alarmist, but still terribly predictable. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy will push for both more abstinence, and higher rates of contraceptive usage among the unmarried. They will call for less complacency and more parental involvement.[2]  Planned Parenthood took the occasion to bash abstinence programs while abstinence programs linked the rise to the fact that 68% of public schools employ contraceptive instruction, which has a 4 to 1 funding advantage over abstinence in the United States. [3] Read more…