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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Arwa Mahdawi

Why aren’t Republicans thrilled by the fall in teen pregnancies?

A heavily pregnant woman touching her exposed belly
Teenagers are wasting their time on TikTok instead of having unprotected sex and popping out babies. Photograph: Posed by model; Oscar Wong/Getty Images

Teenagers these days, eh? Instead of having unprotected sex and popping out babies, they’re wasting their time on TikTok, or something. According to a recent report, the teenage birth rate in the US fell by 7% in 2025. While this might seem like a positive development, it has been a cause of dismay among the Maga-adjacent crowd.

Take Fox News, which ran a segment framing the drop in teen pregnancies as alarming. “We still have 3.6 million births a year,” noted the medical analyst Marc Siegel. “But the problem is teens and young adults. From ages 15 to 19, the fertility rate is down 7%, and it’s down 70% over the last two decades, meaning we’re telling people that are young not to have babies, to wait until they’re in a more stable life situation.” I’m sorry, that’s a problem?

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