Facts

• Over 750,000 teens become pregnant each year.¹
• Over 80 girls 19 and under every hour of the day find out they are pregnant.²
• 82% of teen pregnancies are unplanned.² 
• 50% of teen moms drop out of high school.³
• 1 in 4 sexually active teens are already infected with an STD³
• Six in ten teens who have had sex say they wish they would have waited.¹
• The U.S. has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world.¹
• Though 15-24-year-olds represent only one-quarter of the sexually active population, they account for nearly half of the 20 million new cases of STIs each year. ²
• 10,000 teens are infected by STIs per day, one every eight seconds!²
• Some young people, including those who have had abstinence education, consider oral and anal sex to be abstinent behaviors and do not realize these behaviors present risks of STI transmission.³
• Those who abstain from sex until marriage significantly add to their chance for avoiding problems and finding happiness.⁴

1. National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy

2. Guttmacher Institute

3. Center for Disease Control and Prevention

4. Hooked: New Science on How Casual Sex Is Affecting Our Children. Joe McIlhaney and Freda McKissic Bush