League Backs Teen Pregnancy Project

A national project to learn more about teen pregnancy and develop effective services for pregnant teens is being adapted locally by the Junior League of Los Angeles. According to the league, the most recent figures show that in 1982, 13% of all births in Los Angeles County were to mothers 19 and younger, a higher teen birthrate than that of the rest of California or the country.

Called the Adolescent Pregnancy ChildWatch Program, the project was developed nationally by the Children’s Defense Fund, the Assn. of Junior Leagues, the National Council of Negro Women, the March of Dimes and the National Coalition of a Hundred Black Women.

Its priorities are to prevent first pregnancies among teen-agers, ensure that teen-agers who have had one child do not become pregnant again and develop programs for adequate prenatal care to prevent prematurity, low birth weights and birth defects among babies born to teen-agers.

The first phase of the project is to assess existing services. “We’re fanning out into the community to see what exists for pregnant teens,” said Denia Hightower, a member of the Junior League committee overseeing the project. “Volunteers are going to health organizations, community organizations and schools.” People seem very interested in this issue; said Hightower: “It’s something most people see as a problem.” There has been an abundance of volunteers.

Valuable New Information Expected

Preliminary findings indicate that the survey of the county will result in valuable new information. “I think there’s a misconception about what (in the way of services) does exist,” Hightower said. The public assumes some programs are in place that have in fact lost their funding or changed as community demographics changed. “One of the things we’re finding is that some agencies identified as serving teens cover the general population. Some don’t exist anymore.”

“We thought there were many more programs, particularly in the schools,” ChildWatch coordinator Janice Kern said. “In a place the size of Los Angeles, the numbers (of services to pregnant teen-agers) are staggeringly low.” Also staggering, Kern said, is the amount of research and detective work it took volunteers to locate agencies. “If we have this kind of difficulty (finding services), what kind is a teen-ager experiencing?” she said.

The information will be gathered by the end of this month. A report will be published in September, and provided to schools and legislators among others. A conference will be held Dec. 6 at which, using ChildWatch information, organizations may decide on plans of action in their own communities.

“We’re happy with the networking going on,” Hightower said. A number of organizations are involved in the project. Recruiting volunteers were the UCLA Bush Program in Child and Family Policy, King Drew Medical Center, Planned Parenthood, Florence Crittenton and the United Way.

Groups involved are El Nido, the Los Angeles Urban League Youth Services, L.A. Regional Family Planning, YMCA Youth and Family Center and a number of others.

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More Los Angeles employers selected for bouquets and brickbats by Nine to Five, the National Assn. of Working Women, will be announced on National Secretaries Day, Wednesday, at a press conference at the downtown Hilton.

Along with announcing the employers judged the most “out of line” in what they require of employees using video display terminals, will be an “on line” award for the employer who has made the most advances in VDT health and safety.

The selection was based on a survey of Los Angeles working women, two of whom will be on hand with “horror stories about office automation,” the organization announced. When similar events were put on in other cities, workers reported such incidents as being fired by a computer and a boss who programmed computers to insult employees.

Following the noon press conference, there will be a free public informational program on VDT use in offices.

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The national newspaper, USA Today, was found to have the highest percentage of Page 1 news written by women in a review of 11 major newspapers conducted by the National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund.

In the surveyed front pages of USA Today, published by Gannett, 41.5% of the articles had women’s bylines. USA Today also had a significantly larger number of female staff writers--55, or 41.7% of its 132-person writing staff--than the 10 other papers surveyed.

Selected for the survey were leading newspapers representing geographic regions throughout the country. The front pages surveyed were those of Sept. 17-31, 1984, and Jan. 7-20, 1985.

Least hospitable to women was the New York Times. Only 20 of its 199 local reporters are women, and only 10% of its Page 1 news stories were bylined by women.

Overall, fewer than a quarter of the stories appearing on the front pages of the country’s leading newspapers were written by women.

After USA Today, kindest to women were the Boston Globe with 30.2% of its staff reporters women and 30.5% of its front-page stories written by women, and the Atlanta Journal. Its staff is 36% women, and 30.1% of its front-page articles had women’s bylines during the survey period.

The other papers surveyed were: the Washington Post (26.3% of front-page stories written by women); the Detroit Free Press (26.2%); the Cleveland Plain Dealer (22.6%); the Chicago Tribune (19.2%); the Wall Street Journal (18.8%); the Philadelphia Inquirer (18.4%); and the Los Angeles Times (17.7%). At all but the Atlanta Journal, according to NOW’s research, the proportion of women on staffs was within one percentage point of the proportion of Page 1 stories written by women, although the front-page survey also included stories by wire service and other non-staff writers.

Cathleen Black, publisher of USA Today, was honored as the 1984 recipient of the NOW-LDEF equal employment award.