American States With the Highest Teenage Abortion Rates

American States With the Highest Teenage Abortion Rates In a nation where abortion remains legal despite ongoing legal and legislative debate, which states have the highest rates of teenage abortion? A 2010 report by the Guttmacher Institute compiled teenage pregnancy and abortion statistics in the United States. These state by state statistics show a dramatic decrease in some states while others moved up a little on the list. However, as a whole, the U.S. teenage pregnancy and abortion rates have declined dramatically in recent years. 10 States With the Highest Teen Abortion Rates The available 2010 data for abortions among women aged 15 to 19 is ranked by state. The rate reflects the number of abortions per thousand women in this age range.    Rank State Abortion Rate 1 New York 32 2 Delaware 28 3 New Jersey 24 4 Hawaii 23 5 Maryland 22 6 Connecticut 20 7 Nevada 20 8 California 19 9 Florida 19 10 Alaska 17 More Teen Pregnancy  Statistics and Analysis Overall, of the 614,410 teenage pregnancies reported in the U.S. during 2010, 157,450 ended in abortion and 89,280 in miscarriage. From 1988 to 2010, the abortion rate for teens dropped in every state with many seeing a 50 percent reduction or more. In 2010, 23 states reported an abortion rate in the single digits. Its also important to note that the majority of pregnancies and abortions involve 18- and 19-year-old women. The District of Columbia is the only place in the report with more abortions reported in the 15 to 17 range than in the older group. Yet, D.C. does not count in state rankings. The states with the lowest abortion rates in 2010 were South Dakota, Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Utah, Arkansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, and Texas. Each reported that fewer than 15 percent of teen pregnancies ended in abortion. However, that does not account for state residents who sought an abortion in neighboring states. Only three of the states above rank in the top ten states with the highest teenage pregnancy rates of young women age 15 to 19. They are Nevada (ranked seventh with 68 pregnancies per thousand); Delaware (ranked eighth with 67 pregnancies per thousand); Hawaii (ranked tenth with 65 pregnancies per thousand). The highest pregnancy rate in 2010 was in New Mexico, where 80 in every thousand teens became pregnant. This state ranks fourteenth in the abortion rate. Mississippi had the highest teenage birthrate, with 55 girls for every thousand. The Dramatic Decrease in Teenage Abortions According to this same report, in 2010, the teenage pregnancy rate dropped to a 30 year low (57.4 per thousand). It peaked in 1990 at 51 percent or 116.9 girls for every thousand. This is a significant decrease that has not gone unnoticed.   In a 2014  report also by the Guttmacher Institute, a 32 percent decrease was found in teenage abortions between 2008 and 2014. This follows the 40 percent decline in teenage pregnancies over this same period. There are many influences that are cited as causing this change. One is the fact that fewer teenagers are having sex in general. Among those teens that do have sex, there is an increased use in some form of contraception. The increase in sex education, as well as cultural influences, the media, and even the economy, are considered to have played a role as well. Source U.S. Teenage Pregnancy Statistics National and State Trends and Trends by Race and Ethnicity. 2010. Guttmacher Institute.

How to Improve Your English Spelling

How to Improve Your English Spelling How to Improve Your English Spelling How to Improve Your English Spelling By Michael Addyson, a sixth grader who loves to write, asks, How can I learn to spell better? Thats certainly a worthy question, and over the years, weve given many suggestions for better spelling. I Before E, Except After C How Do I Become a Better Speller? Five Spelling Rules for â€Å"Silent Final E† The Six Spellings of â€Å"Long E† The Eight Spellings of â€Å"Long O† The Spellings of â€Å"Shun† But when young writers ask for advice on spelling or grammar, I always emphasize something else first. Spelling is not writing. Grammar is not writing. Writing is saying, in the clearest way you can, whats on your mind or in your heart. Despite what your teachers may be saying, poor spelling does not keep you from great writing. How do I know? Because people with dyslexia or dysgraphia have become successful authors, including Agatha Christie, John Irving, Avi, Jeanne Betancourt, and Fannie Flagg. And some of the most important writers of modern times couldnt spell. The greatest poor spellers Ernest Hemingway His reply when his newspaper editors complained about his bad spelling: Well, thats what youre hired to correct! He must have not been paying attention in school the day his teacher said, Drop the e and add ing, because he often spelled loveing and moveing. He often used and when he could have used a comma. He still got a Nobel Prize for Literature. F. Scott Fitzgerald His editors had to correct hundreds of spelling mistakes in The Great Gatsby, such as yatch, apon, definate, and critisism. He couldnt even remember how to spell the name of his best friend, who was Ernest Hemingway. One critic wrote, I have said that This Side of Paradise commits almost every sin that a novel can possibly commit: but it does not commit the unpardonable sin: it does not fail to live. William Butler Yeats He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923, but he got poor spelling grades on his report cards, for words such as â€Å"feal† and â€Å"sleap. Unfortunately, his handwriting and spelling counted against him when his essays were graded, though he did well when he could read them aloud. He also had a habit of forgetting his school books. Winston Churchill Works such as the four-volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples led to the 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature. But a childhood report card said, Writing is good, but terribly slow - spelling about as bad as it well can be. William Faulkner One editor remarked on his misspellings, faulty punctuation and accidental repetition. Before achieving the literary fame that led to the 1949 Nobel Prize, he worked two years as University of Mississippis postmaster in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way, editing the mail by throwing it out if he didnt consider it important. Jane Austen Her misspellings included â€Å"scissars† and at age 15, she titled a novel Love and Freindship (remember, I before E except after C). Later editors tamed her spelling, punctuation, and grammar, but according to Oxford University English professor Kathryn Sutherland, a new study of 1,100 handwritten pages of Austens unpublished manuscripts shows she had a better gift for dialogue than anyone had suspected, when editors didnt mess it up. The best way to learn spelling One reason that spelling in English can be so difficult is that our words come from so many different languages with different spelling rules. Thats why spelling bees can be so competitive. Spanish schools dont have spelling bees. Why bother? Spanish is always written phonetically, so any native Spanish-speaking child can correctly spell anything they can write. This is not true of English. The best way to learn to spell better depends on your own learning style. If you learn by hearing, spell words out loud, or have someone else do it for you. Sing the letters. Listen to the rhythm, and you may sense the rules behind them. Teach someone else. If you learn kinesically; that is, by movement, tracing words on paper or in the air may cement their correct spelling in your memory. Typing them will help too. If you learn by seeing, the more you read, the more your spelling will improve. Using a keyboard will help. Seeing what you just typed appearing neatly on the screen may trigger your right/wrong sensors more reliably than trying to read your handwriting. If you learn logically, organize your word lists by rule or family. Not all logic is verbal, and you can sharpen your unconscious spelling sense simply by putting all the words together that end with ed or start with eu. Strategies for better spelling It helps to learn basic spelling rules, but dont worry if you still make mistakes. After a two year study, Stanford University researchers determined that you would need more than 650 rules to correctly spell the 20,000 most common words in the English language. If you learned 300 rules, you might be able to spell half of them. Learn to spell words according to families; that is, in groups of similarly spelled words. In a spelling bee, to make the competition harder, the judges make sure that every word is different from the next. But learning to spell is not a competition, so spelling lists should be as easy to learn as possible with each word similar to the next. In a few minutes, a child can learn to spell take, rake, make, lake, bake, cake, sake, and wake. So when you study patriarch, you may as well learn arch, archive, archaic, architecture, archipelago, and archaeology at the same time. Simply seeing arch on that list might be enough reminder to spell the others correctly. Besides, getting question after question right makes a student feel good. Learn to spell words according to their etymology; that is, according to their language of origin. Many Arabic words begin with al (meaning the) while many Hebrew names end with el (meaning God). In words that came from Greek, the f sound is spelled ph. If you remember those word origins, you will never spell algebra as elgebra, Michael as Micheal, or photograph as fotograf. Though some people may judge you for your mistakes, success in life doesnt depend on good spelling. Fortunately, spellcheckers and friends can help. But when opponents criticized Andrew Jacksons spelling, the future U.S. President retorted, Its a poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Spelling category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Compared "to" or Compared "with"?How to Pronounce Mobile40 Idioms with First