Teenage birth rates have declined in the United States over the past few decades, although Texas has remained in the top 10 states with a teen birth rate of 24.0 births per 1,000 females age 15-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Additionally, 1 in 6 teenagers in Texas that gave birth in 2020 already had at least one other child.
The Texas Tribune analyzed data from the CDC to determine that Texas, along with Alabama, has the highest rate of what they're calling "repeat teen births."
Overall, teenage births counted for 6% of all births in Texas in 2019 and 2020.
For almost every year since 2005, more than one in five teens that gave birth in the town of Brownsville, a poor and predominately Hispanic city on the U.S.-Mexico border, have already given birth to at least one child, according to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services.
Brownsville’s Lincoln Park High School provides day care and flexible scheduling, as all of its students are pregnant or parenting. There are currently five students with three children, according to principal Cynthia Cardenas. She told The Texas Tribune about the challenges she's faced with by trying to help these young mothers balance life and education.
"They're looking at what they need to do to raise their child right now," Cardenas said. "They tell me, 'I can’t make it to school tomorrow because I have to work.' I'm like, 'Wait a minute. You have to prioritize your education.'"
Cardenas added that she wishes Texas would prioritize sex education in schools.
"We need to be proactive instead of reactive," she said. "The parents will not talk to their students about safe sex. … It's just not an open conversation here. These girls need to be educated."
The few high schools in the state that do teach sex education are often focusing on sexual abstinence. This is on top of Texas' already extremely strict abortion laws, in addition to the complicated requirements for teenagers to obtain birth control.
25% of school districts did not offer sex education during the 2015-16 school year, while 85% taught the abstinence-free sex education, according to the Texas Freedom Network.
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Iryanna Rodriguez, an 18-year-old mother of two, lives in Brownsville with her boyfriend, 4-year-old son, and daughter born last year. She attends Lincoln Park High School, and she's on track to graduate on time with Cardenas' help. She also has aspirations of becoming a nurse one day. When her children are older, she said she plans to properly educate them on safe sex, birth control, etc.
"I want them to have more education on that than I did," Rodriguez said.
18-year-old Jannely Villegas expressed a similar feeling about sex education in Texas after going through her own, traumatic pregnancy. She knew nothing about birth control or safe sex when she started to be sexually active with her boyfriend, adding that the most she learned was from the TV show "16 and Pregnant."
"I wish someone taught me about any of that stuff," she said. "We’re not born with the knowledge of, hey, if you’re pregnant, this is what it’s going to feel like, or this is what it means to miss your period."
Villegas now has a 3-month-old son, but was unaware she was pregnant up until the moment she gave birth in the bathroom of her mother's house by herself.
"I didn’t feel the pain until after because I guess I was so traumatized," Villegas said. "When I called my mom in, she almost passed out."
She said that there was very little sex education growing up in the town of La Feria, west of Harlingen.
"I really do wish I had the knowledge in the beginning so I could have done all the things, like the sonogram, the ultrasound, taking care of myself better," Villegas said.
The Texas State Board of Education adjusted its sex education standards in 2020 for the first time in two decades. Seventh and eighth graders will learn about birth control methods starting this year, in addition to the focus on abstinence. Parents now must also "opt-in" for their children to be enrolled in sex education in the state.
"Young people spend all of their early life in school. … We teach them history, we teach them math, but what is more important than teaching them about health and sex ed and their bodies?" Carisa Lopez, Texas Freedom Network political director, said. "They deserve to be armed with this information to guide them through the rest of their lives."
On the other hand, Texas Values, a group that advocates for abstinence-only education, said that more than 22,000 parents were concerned that teaching sex education would encourage more teenagers to have sex.
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