Posted Aug 8, 2017 

TEEN PREGNANCY is less common here than it used to be.

RATES: 24.9 per 1,000 15- to 19-year-old girls in Alamance County — about 149 per year — compared to 30.2 per 1,000 statewide. Alamance has seen a 60 percent decrease in the past 15 years.

“The reduction is in part due to the increased access to services and highly effective birth control methods,” said Stacie Saunders, director of the county Health Department.

Impact Alamance is giving $100,000 to the Health Department to reduce teen pregnancy even further through better Health Department outreach to teens and training for private healthcare providers to better reach teens.

QUESTIONS: Commissioner Amy Galey asked whether this was promoting birth-control methods like the IUD that “some in the pro-life community see as problematic,” as Galey put it.

Saunders said the IUDs now in use work by preventing fertilization, not by keeping the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus.

“The basic definition is they make it inhospitable for pregnancy to occur,” Saunders said.