“Gay, lesbian, bisexual teens at higher pregnancy risk than straight peers”

The Canadian Press reports:

Lesbian, gay and bisexual teens in British Columbia are at a higher risk of becoming pregnant or causing a pregnancy than their heterosexual peers, says a study released Tuesday . . .

[Elizabeth] Saewyc is an associate professor in the school of nursing at the University of British Columbia and research director of the McCreary Centre Society. Her study, which was published in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research . . .

Male teens who described themselves as bisexual or gay were between three and four times more likely than heterosexual boys to have impregnated a girl in 2003 – which is actually a decline from earlier surveys.

Saewyc said it is a common misconception that gay boys don’t have sex with girls . . .

The text of the study, published yesterday, does not appear to be available online; this post will be updated when it is made available. The same author was also involved in an earlier (perhaps part of a series) study published, according to BNET, in the Spring-Summer issue of The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality: Trends in sexual health and risk behaviours among adolescent students in British Columbia

Abstract: Regular monitoring of trends in sexual health and sexual behaviours among adolescents provides strong evidence to guide intervention programs and health policies. Using the province-wide, school-based British Columbia (BC) Adolescent Health Surveys of 1992, 1998, and 2003, this study documented the trends in sexual health and risk behaviours among adolescents in grades 7 to 12 in BC, and explored the associations between sexual behaviours and key risk and protective factors. From 1992 to 2003, the percentage of youth who had ever had sexual intercourse decreased for both males (33.9% to 23.3%) and females (28.6% to 24.3%) and the percentage who used a condom at last intercourse increased for both males (64.4% to 74.9%) and females (52.9% to 64.2%). Among students who had ever had sexual intercourse, the percentage who had first intercourse before age 14 decreased for both sexes. These encouraging results may be related in part to concurrent decreases in the prevalence of sexual abuse or forced intercourse among both male and female adolescents. Protective factors such as feeling connected to family or school were also associated with lower odds of having engaged in risky sexual behaviours. These findings emphasize the importance of including questions about adolescent sexual health behaviours, risk exposures, and protective factors on national and provincial youth health surveys, to monitor trends, inform sexual health promotion strategies and policies, and to document the effectiveness of population-level interventions to foster sexual health among Canadian adolescents.