While covering and researching stories on women’s issues in Nevada, statistics are constantly being lobbed at me. And often, they don’t look good.
NOW (National Organization of Women) and Planned Parenthood agree that the U.S. needs to change sexual education programs to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), unintended and teen pregnancy and sexual assault. So how does Nevada rank?
27th highest in reported cases of AIDS in 2005.
27th highest in reported cases of chlamydia.
16th highest in reported cases of gonorrhea.
4th highest in reported cases of syphilis. (To be fair, there were only 4.7 cases in 2005.)
The CDC notes that women are 2.8 times more likely to contract gonorrhea than men.
(From the Center for Disease Control)
Nationally, of high school students who are sexually active, 63% report using condoms and 18% report using birth control pills (data from 2005).
In Nevada, we are about on par with national statistics. However, our abortion rates in 2000 were one and half times more than the national average for women ages 15-19.
(From the Public Policy Office)
In 2006, a study by Guttmacher Intstitute found that teens (women aged 15-19) made up 11.3% of pregnancies in Nevada. That makes us the top in the nation of teen pregnancies. We are eighth in the nation in the number of teen births (61 per thousand).
