Kendrick Meek: “I am very pleased to bring the subject of teenage pregnancy to the consciousness of everyone in this Nation, and I think…”

“I am very pleased to bring the subject of teenage pregnancy to the consciousness of everyone in this Nation, and I think this special order you have tonight will take us a long way to doing that and having people aware of what is going on to some of our best and most valuable resources, and that is our teenagers. We all know that statistics show us that the baby boomers now have produced a new crop of teenagers, much larger than the baby boomers' population itself, so we are beginning to have more and more of the problems which you have described here. Tonight I am going to take a few minutes and just talk about what is happening in the State of Florida. Most people know about Florida as a beautiful tourist State. They know about it as the State where the Sun shines all the time. They know about it as being a very warm climate. The one thing people do not talk about a lot in the State of Florida is that our rate of teenage pregnancy is growing. Our rate of AIDS is growing. As a matter of fact, we are in the top five in this country as far as AIDS and teenage pregnancies.”