Teen pregnancy rate is the lowest since '73
In '96, 43 births and 8 abortions for Utahns 15-19

WASHINGTON -- Talking about sex isn't easy for Laverne Coates, and she would rather assume that her daughter isn't having it.

"I don't want to hear about it," she said. "I don't want to know about it."She's made it clear, though, that pregnancy is not acceptable, and somehow, her daughter Tamara got the message. Tamara has been having sex for two years, she says, but she always uses contraception.

"To me, having a child in high school is not fun," Tamara Hayman, 18, of Baltimore said.

Evidently, a lot of teens are getting the message: Teen pregnancy plummeted 17 percent in the 1990s to the lowest level since 1973, according to statistics being released Thursday. Teen abortion rates were down, too.

"We have made real progress -- and must do more -- to encourage more young people to delay parenthood," said Vice President Al Gore.

Researchers point to a mix of reasons, including more reliable contraception, fear of AIDS, a new focus on abstinence and even the strong economy.

And there's fresh evidence that the peer pressure so many parents worry about actually does more good than harm.

Two new reports document the decline. New statistics from the Department of Health and Human Services show that births to teenagers fell 4 percent in 1997, helping to push the national birthrate for all women to a record low.

And a report from the Alan Guttmacher Institute finds teen pregnancy dropped 4 percent in 1996 and fell 17 percent from its peak in 1990. The Guttmacher statistics combine the birth data with statistics on abortion and estimates for miscarriages.

The HHS report, which looks at a host of birth data, also found a new record low for births to unmarried black women and a continued decline in out-of-wedlock births in 1997.

Nationwide, there were about 880,000 teen pregnancies in 1996 -- just under one for every 10 teen women. Sixty-two percent of them were 18- and 19-year-olds; the rest were 15 to 17 years old. The report did not look at teens under 15.

In Utah, there were 60 pregnancies, eight abortions and 43 births for every 1,000 women aged 15 to 19.