Batt Wants To Halt Teenage Pregnancies

A new advisory committee has what Gov. Phil Batt calls a frustrating job. It is to come up with recommendations on how to curb the soaring number of teenage pregnancies.

“It doesn’t lend itself to easy solutions,” Batt said.

He signed an executive order creating the new Governor’s Council on Pregnancy Prevention, which held its first meeting Monday.

“Society has got to stop saying it is a normal thing to do, children having children, and then expecting society to take care of them,” Batt said.

Dick Schultz, administrator of the state’s Division of Welfare, told Batt the council’s goal will be to come up with recommendations for a new campaign to cut teen pregnancy.

“It’s a frustrating assignment,” the governor said. “It doesn’t lend itself to easy solutions.”

Batt said the soaring number of teenage pregnancies is a symptom not a cause of the breakdown of society. “Families don’t spend enough time with their children,” he said.

“It has disastrous consequences for society and the children themselves, and it seems to drive all the other problems we have in society.”

The executive order creating the council said in 1993, 2,811 Idaho females ages 10 to 19 became pregnant, 54 per week. Of the teenage pregnancies, about 28 percent were repeat pregnancies.

Schultz said programs in other states have centered on children between the ages of 10 and 14.