Nueces County Commissioner Chuck Cazalas cast the lone no vote when the Commissioners Court approved the county and hospital budgets. Cazalas may have intended his nay vote to be a demonstration of fiscal prudence (he is up for re-election next year), but his suggested budget cuts say more about the coming campaign than about bringing light to wasteful spending.

After the four-to-one vote to approve the budgets of the hospital district and the county, Commissioner Oscar Ortiz asked Cazalas what he would have cut. Cazalas said he would cut funding for teen pregnancy prevention, diabetes education and funding for drug and alcohol treatment. Any of those cuts would be detrimental to Nueces County’s public health.

Cazalas’ suggestions were made about the same time that Child Trends, a national child advocacy group, issued a report putting Texas No. 1 in repeat teen pregnancies, with 23 percent of teen births as repeat births. The report, based on 2006 figures, listed Dallas, with 28 percent, as the metropolitan area with the highest number of repeat teen pregnancies in the nation. These are the second, third or more births by mothers 19 years and younger.

Nor was Dallas the only Texas city on the sad list of metropolitan areas with high repeat teen pregnancies. Five of the top 15 cities were Texas cities, including San Antonio (26 percent), and Houston and Austin (both 24 percent).

The Child Trends report, because it listed only major metropolitan areas, did not include Corpus Christi. But the dismal teen pregnancy rate in the city has already been well-documented. The state health department’s Web site, using 2005 statistics, says the repeat-pregnancy rate for teens in the South Texas region is 14 percent; that figure is for teen mothers 15 to 17 years old.

The implication is clear whether one looks at the Child Trends report or the state numbers: Now is not the time to cut funding for programs aimed to curtail teen pregnancies. Yet a local group tried to persuade the hospital district to drop Planned Parenthood from its budget, the same budget that the commissioners approved. They oppose educating teens about contraceptives and favor abstinence programs. But the proof of the failure of the Bush administration-favored abstinence approach is the state’s repeat teen pregnancy numbers. Texas received more federal dollars than any state to support abstinence education with no money for comprehensive sex education. That approach has been an abject failure.

Teens should be informed about the enormous potential impact to their own lives and to the lives of the babies they bear when they decide to have sex. Insisting on abstinence for teen mothers having their second or third babies, without fact-based knowledge about condoms and other contraceptives, is public policy with blinders.

The local group that opposes Planned Parenthood and other anti-teen pregnancy programs using a comprehensive approach can be expected to continue pressuring public bodies and officials. The Corpus Christi City Council last year regrettably allowed political expediency to overcome sound health policy and derailed a Planned Parenthood grant.

The Nueces County Commissioners Court was right to approve the hospital budget which included the teen pregnancy prevention funding. The need of teens for such sex education is too great, and the teen pregnancy problem is too critical for any other response.