Guess what? Even fundy teens prefer sex to Jesus

Or so this survey on the correlation between religiosity and teen pregnancy levels indicates. Fancy that: teenagers living in religion-dominated states are far more likely to fall prematurely pregnant than teens in reasonable areas. And why? The reason is obvious:

The relationship could be due to the fact that communities with such religious beliefs (a literal interpretation of the Bible, for instance) may frown upon contraception, researchers say. If that same culture isn't successfully discouraging teen sex, the pregnancy and birth rates rise.

[…]

However, the results don't say anything about cause and effect, though study researcher Joseph Strayhorn of Drexel University College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh offers a speculation of the most probable explanation: "We conjecture that religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself."

Wow, you mean that abstinence-only birth control doesn’t work, and that the disuse of proper contraception (as opposed to foolishly trying to prevent kids from fornicating when their sex drive is stronger than corrugated steel) may be a bad idea? Yeah, I’m shocked, too.

They’ve classified the results in a neat little table. Here’s the top end (“1” = highest):

The only thing that’s remotely strange or surprising about these numbers is how Texas isn’t at the number one spot. But, I suppose being third crazy isn’t too bad, either, if that’s what you’re aiming for.

Conversely, here’s a peek at the bottom of the chart, or the states that have the least teen pregnancies and births:

Huh. All those evil Liberalz. Hey, I know: I guess they must eat their babies, then hide the evidence, to garner such low scores, right? Right?

Overall, this is just more repeating of that mind-numbingly-obvious truth: that you cannot stop hormonal teens from having sex, and especially that when you tell them not to use contraception, they will inevitably fall pregnant. Thinking otherwise is the mark of the deluded, the naive, or the ignorant/stupid.

(via Pharyngula)
Technorati tags: teen pregnancy · sex · contraception · birth control · abstinence-only · surveys · teenagers · fundies