Remarks on receiving the teen pregnancy report

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, June 17, 1996

This is one of those moments when I have the feeling if I would stop now I'd be way ahead [Laughter] Thank you, Blessing Tate, for that wonderful statement. And thank you, Blessing and Salvador, both of you, for the powerful example of your lives.

Thank you, Michael Carrera, for the work you've done and for sticking with it over so many years. I want to thank Rebecca Maynard for this remarkable study, which I believe will have a significant impact on our United States. I thank my friend Paul Tudor Jones and Robin Hood Foundation for funding it, and also for being a personal evangelist for the cause of reducing the problem of teen pregnancy in America. The first time I ever met him, it was about the second sentence out of his mouth: "We've got to do something about this. What are you doing about it?" [Laughter]

I thank Isabel Sawhill and my longtime friend Governor Tom Kean for being willing to organize and lead this national campaign against teen pregnancy. I thank you especially, Governor Kean, for being concerned about this over so many years. Ten years ago, we were on a Carnegie commission on middle schools, and Tom Kean was asking questions about this problem then, worrying about our young people. And I thank you for that.

Thank you, Senator Kassebaum, for your leadership and your willingness to serve. We'll miss you in the Senate, but I'm glad you're going to do this. I thank you. And thank you, Congresswoman Lowey, for always being there. Congressman Barrett was here a moment ago and had to leave. But I thank you all very, very much.

There is one other person I would like to thank who is not here today, Dr. Henry Foster, who is in Hartford meeting with local officials about their teen pregnancy programs but who has been willing to work very hard on this endeavor for so many years.

I have a few remarks I want to make about this whole endeavor, but before I do, if you will forgive me since this is my last opportunity to make a public statement of the day, I want to also make a few comments about what happened last night in Enid, Oklahoma, where another predominantly African-American church was burned.

Federal agents are now on the scene. We're doing what we can to find out what happened. But it is clear that we now have a rash of church burnings over the last year and a half. All of us who have any responsibility in this area have to work overtime to get to the bottom of the crimes and to help the churches and the communities rebuild.

Today our top Federal law enforcement officials are meeting with out United States Attorneys from all over American who are here and the heads of the FBI and the ATF offices from the affected States to work together and plot a strategy about where to go from here. The State attorneys general from the affected States will be meeting to coordinate their efforts in the next 2 weeks. In advance of that meeting, I am inviting the Governors from all the affected States to come to the White House next week to work together with us to prevent future incidents, to unite our communities, to rebuild the churches that have been burned.

I do want to say one more time, this must be an affair of the heart and the mind for America. This country was founded on the premise of religious liberty. That's how we got started. It's in the first amendment to the Constitution. And we have worked hard for more than 200 years to purge ourselves of racism. It is the cruelest of all ironies that an expression of bigotry in America that would sweep this country is one that involves trashing religious liberty. We have had over 30 churches burned. We have also had one mosque burned. This is wrong, and we must stop it.

We are here today because of what you've already heard. We know that strong families are the building block of our society. We know that millions of children that are born to mothers who aren't ready to be parents are robbed of their full potential.

When you see these two young-people up here and you imagine what their lives are now going to be like, what their children will be like, what their contributions will be 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now, they say more than I ever could about what is truly at stake in dealing with this problem of teen pregnancy. I appreciate the fact that Governor Kean said that this is a uniquely American dilemma. It is really true. There is no advanced country in the world that has anything like the teen pregnancy problem that we do, the out-of-wedlock pregnancy problem that we do, and we have got to do something about it. We have to give these young people opportunity. We have to insist that they take more responsibility. But we must also come together as a community to help them to make the most of their own lives and to make good choices.

You heard Dr. Maynard talk about the costs of teen pregnancy. There's no point in my reiterating them now. But if you just think about all the bad things that can happen to kids, they're more likely for teen mothers. And if you think about the good things that can happen to kids, they're less likely for teen mothers. And sure, some of them make it. And we have to do the best we can to make sure more of them do very well.