Article in the Herald today, including:
The teen pregnancy rate hit a 40-year peak in 2008 despite a long-term downward trend in the proportion of teenagers actually giving birth.
A report by Social Development Ministry analyst Dr Barbara Collins has found that an almost continuous rise in the number of teenagers having abortions has more than offset the downward trend in the actual birthrate since the mid-1980s.
Both the abortion rate and the teenage birthrate dropped last year, but the overall teen pregnancy rate was still the fifth-highest since the teenage birthrate peaked in the early 1970s.
...Dr Collins' data show that the teenage birthrate dropped from a peak of 67.6 for every 1000 girls aged 15 to 19 in 1972 to a postwar low of 25.6 in 2002.
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