what total hogwash. This is nothing but liberal spin on an issue to try to discredit religion. Bob and Lucifer should do a bit of research before posting on such propoganda. I delved into the research by Guttmacher and the data does not support the conclusion Bob and Lucifer want to espouse. The data is located at
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/09/12/USTPstats.pdf.
The biggest problem with the conclusion drawn by the author is that she totally discounts the fact that people get married younger and have kids younger in these religious states. A quote from the article --
In the south, there is a higher rate of marriage of teenagers. And one possible explanation is just that in the southern states, which are also more religious, people just get married earlier and have planned pregnancies and those have perfectly good outcomes," Strayhorn said. He added that he doesn't think the earlier marriage idea explains the religion-birth link. . Okay, he doesn't THINK it has an effect but shows no data to support his THOUGHT.
The second problem is that she discounts the abortion part of the equation.
The data to look at is not birth rates, but pregnancy rates to get the real story.
Here are the top fifteen PREGNANCY rate states (per 1000) in order--Nevada, Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, California, Georgia, NC, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, Alabama
These stats take abortion out of the picture. Lo and behold, all of a sudden, Nevada (that bastion of the Christian faith) jumps to number one. And, Florida, California, New York, Hawaii, Maryland make huge leaps up in the rankings.
SC, Tenn, La, OK, Ky, drop out of the top 15.
Bottom line, you cannot come to the conclusion that Bob and Lucifer would like to come to--ie: in more religious states, there is more of a problem with teenage sex and pregnancy. In other words, what they are trying to say is, look at those hypocrites.
Give me a break.
Next time do your homework before posting data that was analyzed by a lib to push a lib agenda. The complete look at the data doesn't support your position.