Conservative Religiosity and Teen Birth Rates

NY Times: Religion’s Link to Teen Pregnancy, by Lisa Belkin:

A report this week in the journal Reproductive Health describes what researchers call “a strong association” between the teenage birth rate of a particular state and its “level of religiosity.”

The correlation is not what you might expect. The more religious the state, the higher the rates of teen pregnancy....

From the study's conclusions:

With data aggregated at the state level, conservative religious beliefs strongly predict U.S. teen birth rates, in a relationship that does not appear to be the result of confounding by income or abortion rates. One possible explanation for this relationship is that teens in more religious communities may be less likely to use contraception.