S.C. teen pregnancy prevention program cut
By Seanna Adcox - The Associated Press

COLUMBIA --
A program aimed at preventing teen pregnancy in South Carolina will be eliminated by the end of the year, despite a recent rise in teen pregnancy rates, the state agency that oversees Medicaid said Friday.

The program served 6,742 children last school year and targets at-risk girls ages 10 to 19.

The program defines at-risk girls partly by poverty, whether their parents or siblings were teen parents and if they've been abused or previously pregnant.

In the past, the state's roughly $400,000 combined with a 9-to-1 federal match to provide $3.6 million statewide yearly, said Jeff Stensland, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Human Services.

But the state money will stop Dec. 31, largely because budget cuts were ordered by the state budget board.

The Health and Human Services agency sent a letter Friday about the cut to the 40 groups statewide that get reimbursed through the Medicaid Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Services, or MAPPS, Stensland said.

The cut was first reported Friday by The Post and Courier in Charleston.

Teen advocates called it a backward move.

"At a time when teen pregnancy rates are increasing, it's not the time to be cutting programs," said Forrest Alton, director of the S.C. Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

After a decade of decline, teen pregnancy rates are on the rise in South Carolina.

More than 10,000 girls ages 10 and 19 got pregnant in South Carolina in 2006, the most recent data available from the state Department of Health and Environmental Control. That's nearly 36 of every 1,000 girls that age, and more than a quarter of those girls had been pregnant before.

The rate reached a low of 33 of every 1,000 girls in 2003, before increasing for three consecutive years. Teen pregnancy rates had declined 25 percent in South Carolina from 1994 to 2004.

Stensland said state Medicaid officials also are concerned by the rising rates but believe the program should be run by another agency.

Health and Human Services began running it in 2001, taking over from the Department of Social Services, where it's better suited, he said.

The providers, many of them working in schools, use the money to counsel and educate children about family planning, goal-setting, how to refuse advances and other skills.