Jane Harman: “preventing teen pregnancy is a key part of moving people from welfare to work and reducing poverty. Over half of all…”

“preventing teen pregnancy is a key part of moving people from welfare to work and reducing poverty. Over half of all mothers on welfare had their first child as a teenager, and two-thirds of the families begun by teen mothers are poor. For all these reasons, preventing teen pregnancy is an issue we all should be able to agree on in Congress. It should not be a Republican issue, not a Democratic issue. But the critical need to reduce the number of teen pregnancies too often gets lost in an ideological debate over abortion, creating federal policies that don't fit the reality of teen pregnancy prevention across the country. Three weeks ago, the House Commerce Committee engaged in a disappointing debate over the abstinence-only education. The Committee rejected on ideological lines proposals to provide states flexibility in the way they use welfare funds for teen pregnancy, require abstinence-only programs to give out medically accurate information, and require that funds go to programs that have proven effective. The amendment I offered in Committee would have modified existing law so that states have the option of funding programs according to the existing federal definition of abstinence-only, or another approach to abstinence education that they deem appropriate. This amendment was not an anti-abstinence amendment--it specifically stated that programs should promote abstinence.”