Teens

Teens

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“However,” Mrs. Facchina added, teenage pregnancy is something we at the Health Department spend a great deal of time working with. Often the pregnant teenager has little idea of what raising a child is like or how their lives are going to change. They need a lot of followup with prenatal care and emotional support. We follow the children very closely after they’re bom with clinics and home visits, offering support and information on child care,” she said.

In 1988, the most recent year for which statistics are available, there were 325 cases of teenage pregnancy in the Rappahannock-Rapidan Health District, which includes Rappahannock, Culpeper, Fauquier, Madison and Orange counties. These resulted in 168 live births. For Rappahannock in that year the figures were 12 pregnancies with eight live births.

Mrs. Facchina said that the Rappahannock County Health Department does not offer any information or advice on abortions. “Most of the girls who come to me pregnant want to keep their babies,” she said. “We do see some who have already had abortions, some a series of abortions. We’ll see them when they have a checkup here afterwards.

“Ninety-nine percent of the girls I see are already sexually active by the time I fcee them,” she said. “For a lot of them there could be several partners. A lot of people think they come up here and we just give them pills. We stress the importance and safety of a monogomous relationship and we stress abstinence, but we do education on the use of condoms too because with some people, the first two are not options.”

Birth control pills, condoms and foam are available free of charge through the Health Department’s family planning clinics. Both married and unmarried women are seen at these clinics, and education is a major part of the service offered, Mrs. Facchina said.