The new issue of the journal Reproductive Health has a study of the relationship between religious activity and teen pregnancy, according to this story on Live Science.com.

I found the story through this NT blog, which I think presents the issue slightly wrong. The journal is studying states that have the most conservative religious beliefs and those with the highest teen pregnancy rates. Arizona isn’t in the top ten in the former, but ranks no less than fifth in the latter.

I guess it means that, while Arizona is one of the more moderate of the crazily religious states, it makes up for it by going the extra mile and having a much higher teen pregnancy rate than you’d expect.

The study made this damning conclusion:

[T]he results showed more abortions among teenagers in the less religious states, which would skew the findings since fewer teens in these states would have births. But even after accounting for the abortions, the study team still found a state’s level of religiosity could predict their teen birth rate. The higher the religiosity, the higher was the teen birth rate on average.

p.s. This just in! Also from James King at New Times: Arizona leads the nation in student loan defaults.

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