Underage pregnancies
SIR – Young people have never received more information on sexual matters (Leading article, July 8), and it has never been easier for them to access contraception and the morning-after pill behind their parents’ backs. Yet under-16 conception rates stand at the same level as they did when the strategy began, and sexually transmitted infection rates have soared.
Contraceptive-based sex education was key to the Government’s latest failed project, the Young People’s Development Programme. Even though all of the participants were aged 13-15, and therefore below the age of consent, youth workers involved in the study set out to enable them to make “informed choices” about sex.
But offering “informed choices” is inadequate. It allows children under the age of 16 to make the “informed choice” to engage in unlawful sexual activity just as much as it allows them to make an “informed choice” to wait. The advocates of informed choice are setting their sights too low.
It is not informed choices we should be aiming for, but wise, moral and lawful choices, and there is certainly no evidence that programmes will ever achieve that so long as they are devoid of a moral compass and keep parents out of the loop.
Norman Wells
Director
Family Education Trust
Whitton, Twickenham
Published in the Daily Telegraph, 13 July 2009