If there is one message that the religious right undoubtedly trumpets as loudly as possible, it is that they want young girls to wait until marriage to have sex. The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), though it mostly supports contraception, largely opposes its usage by unmarried couples. Other evangelicals go a step further, and present their daughters with purity rings, which said daughters are subsequently obligated to wear. Polling amongst evangelicals shows that these methods are preaching to the choir: 76% believe sex between unmarried couples is morally wrong, while 79% and 87% believe the same about having a baby outside of marriage and teen pregnancy, respectively.
Somewhere down the line, these strategies of dissuasion, through communal and familial pressure, did not work as planned. Per its most recent year for which statistics are available, CDC data shows a concentration of both teenage mothers, and adult unwed mothers, in America's Bible Belt. Which begs the question: how did a community, which culturally stigmatizes teens and unmarried women having sex more periodically than just about any other community in the world, end up with higher rates of pregnancy among teens and unmarried women? Those conceptions can't have all been immaculate, after all.
There have been myriad studies and extensive data collection on the topic of teen pregnancy. Some draw a link between juvenile delinquency and teen pregnancy; others note that factors such as poverty and child marriage are predictive of teen pregnancy, and that the predictive factors vary by race. The CDC has noted that birth rates among black and hispanic teenagers far outpaces the birth rate among white teenagers. As for pregnancy among unmarried women, data shows disparities by race, economic status, and educational attainment.
This topic's series of articles will seek to answer the question of why the rate of teen pregnancy and unmarried mothers is higher in the Bible Belt, despite religious conservatives' efforts to stigmatize the actions that precede such events. Some of the theories will be logical, such as juvenile delinquency rates; others will be quite a bit darker, such as the rate of child marriage. Either way, the reason why tens of thousands of women and girls are trapped in cycles of poverty through pregnancy in the Bible Belt region, will be brought to light. If you would like to read the rest of the series, sign up to be a member Here!