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In welfare reform's wake, lawmakers take multifaceted approach to teen pregnancy.


 In response to the 1996 US federal welfare reform law, states have prioritized legislative initiatives to reduce the incidence of adolescent pregnancy. By 1994, 31 states and the District of Columbia already had adolescent pregnancy prevention initiative in place, with most granting financial support to community-based efforts, conducting media or outreach campaigns, sponsoring education-related activities, and providing contraceptive services. Additional federal funding to reduce out-of-wedlock births to women on welfare has been almost exclusively channeled by states into programs for adolescents. The five states that achieve the largest decreases in numbers of illegitimate births without increasing numbers of abortions will receive a bonus of $20-25 million from the federal government. Louisiana and Arizona enacted measures that appear to respond to this incentive. In Louisiana, the initiative bonus would be passed on to the ten parishes with the most success, and Arizona allocated its entire federal portion of the new welfare block grant to the Department of Health for programs to decrease pregnancy without increasing abortion rates. While the federal government's program emphasizes proscriptive measures, such as abstinence-only education, a number of states have begun, continued, or expanded comprehensive programs to prevent adolescent pregnancy. These include Arkansas, Rhode Island, Iowa, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Efforts were made to improve public awareness about adolescent pregnancy in Florida, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania. Broad-based bills fell to gubernatorial vetos in California and South Carolina, and a measure to create an independent commission to develop a state plan to reduce adolescent pregnancy rates is pending in Massachusetts.
