| Every year, almost 50,000 girls under 18 fall pregnant, leading critics to claim that government-led efforts to encourage safer sex are backfiring. The number who conceive is at its highest level since a multi-million-pound teenage pregnancy crackdown almost a decade ago. As a result, Britain tops the league table of teenage mothers in western Europe, despite also having a record number of school-age abortions. This comes despite the Government investing more than £150 million in an attempt to stem the tide of conceptions - and pledging to cut teenage pregnancy rates by half by the end of this decade. Ministers admit - in a document quietly released before the Christmas parliamentary recess - that the 2010 target to cut teenage pregnancies is doomed to failure. ...Government policies aimed at dealing with the problem have allowed girls to obtain standard contraceptive and morning-after pills at school, without the consent of their parents, while new proposals will allow them to go directly to pharmacists. Last night, critics said that Labour's policies had backfired and made girls feel increasingly under pressure to become sexually active at a younger age. Others expressed fears that national targets were powerless in the face of a popular culture in which youth was increasingly sexualised. Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust charity, said that the Government had allowed the "systematic removal of every restraint that used to act as a disincentive to under-age sex". There was no evidence that easy availability of contraception reduced teenage pregnancy rates, instead it added to pressure on young girls by normalising under-age sex, he said. Mr Wells also attacked the Government's commitment to confidentiality policies about contraception which "kept parents in the dark about their children's sexual activity". "The problems associated with teenage pregnancy will never be solved so long as the Government persists with its reliance on yet more contraception and sex education," he said. "What we need is a radical change away from a culture which has reduced sex to a casual recreational activity." |
The Dutch program is just as liberal but one key component that is not used in the British program.
| "Liberal campaigners in this country point to Holland's permissive health policies, including compulsory sex education in schools from the age of five, as being key to its success. While schools are free to design their own programmes, some of the most shocking initiatives have included condom demonstrations for 10?year?olds, trips to sex shops for older teenagers, and cartoon videos on how to masturbate. But advocates of the Dutch approach say the practical demonstrations are just a tiny part of their agenda, which encourages teens to discuss the moral and emotional implications of sex. Typical debates include reasons to have sex, what to say if a boy refuses to wear a condom and how to maintain self-respect. Dutch campaigners say Britain's schools tick the box for sex education by providing biology lessons and free condoms, without arming teenage girls with the confidence to say no to unwanted advances, or to care for their sexual health. A study of teenagers in Holland and Britain found that while boys and girls in the Netherlands gave "love and commitment" as their primary reason for losing their virginity, as did girls in this country, British boys were more strongly influenced by peer pressure, opportunity and physical attraction. Further British research showed that one-third of teenage girls lost their virginity to please a boyfriend, while more than half had experienced unprotected sex." |
The key is to have the moral and personal aspects of having sex at that young age to be just as important as the technical part. Leave that out and you get record births and abortions with no end in sight.
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