ONE in three American girls falls pregnant before the age of 20, offering hope to Republican strategists that the electorate will shrug off the fact that 17-year-old Bristol Palin is expecting.
Educators, meanwhile, are hoping the national discussion about the pregnancy of the daughter of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin will renew the scrutiny of Federal Government-backed abstinence-until-marriage sex education programs.
"The US is so puritanical, and does not want to talk about sex," said Stephen Conley, executive director of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counsellors and Therapists. "Over the past eight to 10 years, we have had the abstinence movement take over sex education."
He said studies had found the programs to be ineffective in changing sexual behaviour.
"The states have realised this is not a public health approach and 25 states have withdrawn. Sarah Palin's own state, Alaska, has pulled out, but she is such a proponent [of abstinence programs], I am sure as Governor she is going to try to reapply."
They may be quite normal but teen pregnancies are a recurring controversy.
Last year the younger sister of singer Britney Spears, Jamie Lynn, then 16, was revealed to be pregnant. In April, 17 girls at a Massachusetts high school were said to have taken a "pregnancy pact" to support one another.
As an attempt to explain a fourfold increase in conception among the students, the story was denied and the pregnancies dismissed as a statistical blip.
Mrs Palin opposes any school-based sex education that does not adopt the abstinence approach, and opposes abortion in all circumstances except where the mother's life is in danger.
Republican conservatives have applauded Bristol Palin for opting to carry her baby to full term. But Logan Levkoff, a sexuality educator, told music video network MTV she should not be lauded.
"We shouldn't hold this girl up on a pedestal because of the mistake she made and then the decision she made afterwards," Dr Levkoff said. "Whether or not she keeps this baby, teen pregnancy isn't a good thing."
Stephen Conley said the US had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the developed world and that legislation overseeing the abstinence programs was preventing discussion of contraception except in the context of failure rates.
Abstinence programs, which cost $US176 million in 2007, have been controversial since a congressional committee report found teens were being wrongly taught that HIV can spread via sweat and tears, and that condoms failed to stop transmission of HIV up to 31 per cent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.
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