cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45445434
Fox News Senior Medical Analyst Marc Siegel made some eyebrow-raising comments lamenting that birth rates are down among teenagers aged 15 to 19.
On Thursday, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that the U.S. fertility rate fell to another record low. The agency reported that the number of births per 1,000 women of childbearing age declined from 53.8 in 2024 to 53.1 last year. The latest figure represents a continuation of a decades-long decline in fertility rates.
Siegel joined Friday’s edition of America’s Newsroom, where Dana Perino said that while the continuing trend is not surprising, “the numbers might feel a little shocking.”
I mean, isn’t it odd that the statistic reported uses that age range? I don’t wanna defend Fixed News for anything they do, but if the range they’re given is 15-19, and they want to say that “young adults” (18 to early 20s) birth rates are down, they have to include the 15 year olds.
It’s really strange that the data available lumps “barely old enough to be biologically capable of bringing a child to term but mentally and emotionally incapable of making their own informed decisions” into the same category as “legal adult who may have taken deliberate action to prepare and plan for a pregnancy”. I’d be curious to see how splitting the ages up to something like 14-17 and 18-21 would effect the data, and what was reported.