Kentucky environmental attorney Sanders says U.S. birth rate hits all time high in 2007; shockenly 40% of births are to unmarried women.

The birth rate for U.S. teens aged 15 to 19 increased by about 1 percent in 2007, from 41.9 births per 1,000 in 2006 to 42.5 in 2007, according to a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is the second year in a row that teen births have gone up. They increased 3 percent in 2006 following a 14-year decline.


Birth rates also increased for women in their 20s, 30s and early 40s, but remained unchanged for younger teens and pre-teens aged 10-14. Only Hispanic teens noted a decline in the birth rate, which fell 2 percent in 2007 to 81.7 births per 1,000.


One alarming note in the CDC report: unmarried childbearing increased to historic levels in 2007 for women aged 15-44. An estimated 1.7 million babies were born to unmarried women in 2007, accounting for 39.7 percent of all births in the United States – an increase of 4 percent from 2006. Unmarried childbearing has increased 26 percent since 2002 when the recent steep increases began.



Total U.S. births rose in 2007 to over 4, 317,119, the highest number of births ever registered in the United States.