One of Cascadia’s great successes in recent decades has been a steep but little-heralded decline in teen births—heartening progress toward a future in which all children are born wanted.

The proximate cause of this encouraging trend has been neither abstinence nor abortion but better contraception. And, interestingly, a body of suggestive evidence hints at an underlying cause that is even more welcome than the trend itself: rising confidence and hope among Cascadia’s girls.

In 2004, the most recent year for which complete data are available, fewer than 27 of every 1,000 female teens in the region gave birth—half the rate of the early 1970s. Young Cascadian women have never had so few babies. BC teens have led the way.

What lies behind this success?

Not abortion. Access to legal abortion expanded in the 1970s, and remained relatively unrestricted throughout the period in Cascadia (in contrast to some other parts of the continent). But the result of increased access has been not a rising but a falling teen abortion rate ever since 1980—in the Northwest states, it has fallen even faster than teen births since 1995.

Not abstinence—or hardly abstinence at all. Limited local data and more-robust national data from Canada and the United States suggest that teens—especially males—are slightly slower to have sex now than a decade ago. And they are moderately slower to switch partners. They’re probably not making these choices because of the US federal program promoting abstinence-only sex education. Canadian teens, virtually none of whom get abstinence-only sex ed, are also somewhat less sexually active, the same as American teens.

But these changes in Cascadian teen sexuality are too small, statistically, to account for more than a pittance of the stunning drop-off in teen pregnancies (see chart 2).

(Idaho and BC data on teen pregnancy are incomplete for years before 1990, so the chart only shows the most reliable data.)

Not less sex but safer sex likely accounts for most of the improvement. Cascadian teens are preventing pregnancy better than their counterparts in prior generations. They’re using contraception more of the time and they’re using more-effective forms of contraception. For example, one large study found 40 percent more BC teens using birth control pills in 1998 than in 1992.

British Columbia’s lead over its southern neighbors in preventing teen pregnancies has the same causes. Although roughly the same share of teens are sexually active in the province and the Northwest states, for example, just half as many BC teens as American teens use no protection their first time. In addition, 40 percent more Canadian teens use highly effective medical means such as the pill than do American teens, and 25 percent more BC teens use condoms regularly than do American teens.

Yet even these changes in teens’ use of contraception—as substantial as they are—do not match the statistical magnitude of plunging teen pregnancy and birth rates. Something else must be at work. That something else is most likely a rise in motivation among teens to avoid pregnancy, and that’s profoundly encouraging news.

Among the greatest risk-factors for teen pregnancy is ambivalence among girls about postponing motherhood: girls who are not strongly disinclined to get pregnant are fairly likely to get pregnant. Such ambivalence usually stems from a shortage of hopes for the future. And the absence of hope is often a result of childhoods marked by deprivation, trauma, or both. More than 80 percent of under-20 mothers in the United States grow up in poor or low-income households; more than 60 percent of under-18 mothers in Washington are survivors of child sexual abuse.

Indeed, statistically, teen births are perhaps better understood as outcomes of poverty and abuse than as outcomes of teen sex. Hopeful, thriving girls in supportive, economically secure families rarely get pregnant. They not only use contraception; they use it carefully—which makes a big difference. And in the unusual cases when they do get pregnant, they usually opt for abortions over immediate motherhood.

So plunging rates of teen pregnancy and births are probably an indication that Cascadian girls’ confidence in and hopes for the future have been rising and that the conditions of their lives have been improving. And these trends are likely most pronounced in British Columbia, which has much less poverty and greater investment in public education than its southern neighbors.

British Columbia’s strong record suggests there may be synergy between the province’s low poverty and the comprehensive suite of reproductive health services it offers to all women. Young women who are motivated make fuller use of the tools available to them, which in the province include sexuality education in schools, contraceptive services from doctors and clinics, over-the-counter emergency contraceptive pills from all pharmacies, and a reliable network of safe, legal abortion providers.

Few teens plan to become parents early in life. Some simply lack motivation to guard conscientiously against early motherhood. Declining teen births suggest that Cascadia—and especially British Columbia—is increasingly giving them the contraceptive means, plus the educational and economic motives, to control their reproduction.

More information

Sightline's population indicator
Sightine's report Population Reprieve
Access to emergency contraception