Teen Pregnancy Linked to Greater Risk of Early Death

A large new study out of Canada suggests that teens who become pregnant are more likely to die by their 31st birthday. The findings, published Thursday in JAMA Network Open, hold true whether or not the teens wind up giving birth.

• Overall, teens who became pregnant were 50% more likely to have a premature death by 31 than those who did not become pregnant, reports the Toronto Star. The risk increased even more for teens who had two pregnancies or for those who became pregnant before age 16.
• Teens who carried their pregnancy to term were more than twice as likely to have a premature death, reports the New York Times, and the rate was about the same for those who miscarried. Those who terminated the pregnancy had a lower risk but were still 40% more likely to have a premature death.
• "Some people will argue that we shouldn't be judgmental about this, but I think we've always known intuitively that there's an age that is too young for pregnancy," says Dr. Joel G. Ray of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, the study's lead author.

• It's not the pregnancy itself leading to the early deaths, say researchers. "We think it's likely a combination of exposure to factors associated with adverse childhood experiences, such as family instability, poverty, violence, and racism, and potentially ongoing experiences over the course of their lives that people who've had a pregnancy in adolescence are more likely to have," says Dr. Ashley Vandermorris of SicKKids hospital and co-author of the study.
• Generally speaking, teens who became pregnant were from neighborhoods with lower incomes and high school graduation rates than average.
• Injuries—both of the intentional (self-inflicted) and unintentional (car crash, assault) variety—were the most common cause of early deaths. The study followed more than 2 million females in Ontario province between 1991 and 2021.

(More teen pregnancy stories.)