Under modern conditions, teen pregnancies are considered not a blessing but a curse. This is so because most of the children of these pregnancies will grow up fatherless and at high risk themselves for various social and behavioral problems, the education and work lives of their mothers will be seriously impaired, and the welfare and social costs to the nation will be great. Each year in this country almost one million teenagers become pregnant, and approximately four in ten girls become pregnant at least once before reaching the age of twenty. Although the teen pregnancy rate in the United States has dropped some in the past few years, it is still substantially higher than in the early 1970s and the drop should not deflect us from grappling with this urgent national problem. Indeed, with many so-called baby boom echo children now entering their teenage years, the total number of teen pregnancies is expected to increase significantly over the next decade.