Power to Decide

Power to Decide (originally known as The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy) was founded in 1996 in response to President Clinton’s 1995 State of the Union call to reduce teen pregnancy rates. At the time, the rate of teen pregnancy in the U.S. exceeded most developed countries and was viewed by the President as the nation’s most pressing domestic issue. 

Since peaking in the early 1990s, birth rates among teens ages 15-19 have declined 72%. According to final birth data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2018 the teen birth rate hit a record low of 17.4 births per 1,000 females (down from 61.8 births per 1,000 in 1991).  

Despite dramatic declines in teen pregnancies and births over the past two decades, approximately 45% of pregnancies to women of all ages are unplanned. To address the contrasting trends of declines in teen pregnancies and steady or increasing rates of unintended pregnancy among people in their 20s, we expanded our mission in 2005 and became the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.