Fox News Just Complained About How Low Teen Pregnancy Rates Currently Are—And WTF‽‽

During a Friday segment on Fox News's America’s Newsroom with anchor Dana Perino, senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel called a declining birth rate among people aged 15-19 a "problem."

The discussion revolved around new CDC data showing the United States fertility rate, based on birth rates, has fallen to a record low. The fertility rate fell 7 percent in 2025, from 53.8 births per 1,000 childbearing aged women—defined as age 15 to 44—in 2024 to 53.1, according to a report released by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics on Thursday.

The statistics are skewed by excluding some childbearing aged women, both younger and older than the target group, as well as the assumption that all people assigned female at birth are fertile and that all pregnancies end with a live birth.

Congenital conditions as well as illness, injury, and late presenting disorders can all cause infertility and fetal defects can cause miscarriage and stillbirth making the label "fertility rate" for statistics on live births dubious at best.

But when reviewing the graph of birth rates by age of the mother over year of birth, Siegel remarked:

"We still have 3.6 million births a year. But the problem is teens and young adults from ages 15 to 19."

Siegel added:

"The fertility rate is down 7 percent, and it’s down 70 percent over the last two decades, meaning we’re telling people that are young not to have babies, to wait until they’re in a more stable life situation, until they’re more financially secure. Maybe they haven’t found the right partner."

You can see Siegel's comments here:

People were appalled that anyone in the healthcare field would see a drop in teen pregnancy as a problem.

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In the same segment, Siegel said:

"Dana, people are having kids in their 30s now, not their 20s. And again, that’s leading to one thing I want to point out."

"The replacement rate is down to 1.56, meaning every couple is having, on average, 1.56 children in the United States. We need two or above to keep the population at the same amount."

Teen pregnancies peaked at 96.3 per 1,000 in the United States around 1957, then began to steadily decline. A second smaller peak occurred around 1991, but has fallen ever since.

Experts cite increased education and access to birth control for the decline in teen pregnancies as well as an overall shift in women choosing to marry and/or have children later in life.

Fox News and other conservative media have been echoing the alarm over lower birth rates in the United States. While not specified in Siegel's commentary, much of the alarm stems from the fear mongering Great Replacement conspiracy theory which warns that minorities will replace Whites as the majority.

Project 2025 also addressed a push to remove women from the workplace and limit their reproductive freedom to force more births.