There is a brand new condom which is marijuana flavored?? I don't even want to think about it! :)
This month, every press outlet in the UK reported on the case of the 13-year-old boy who had fathered a child by a 15-year-old girl. The social services were falling all over one another to offer help to the "parents." This comes on top of new figures last week reporting that INCREASING numbers of teenagers are becoming pregnant despite a 286 million pound government campaign to tackle the problem.
Official figures to be published next week will show that the conception rate among under-18s is on the rise after dropping for several years. The figures will reinforce England's position as the teenage pregnancy capital of Europe. About 40 in every 1,000 schoolgirls in England become pregnant each year. Half have abortions.
The Government had promised to halve teenage pregnancy rates between 1998 and 2010 and introduced a multi-million-pound plan to make condoms, the morning-after Pill and sex education more easily available.
Figures published by the Office for National Statistics late last year showed increases in the first three quarters of 2007 from the 2006 numbers, with a high of 42.7 conceptions per thousand teenage girls in June compared with 38.8 the previous year.
Figures for the whole of 2007, to be released on Wednesday, are expected to confirm a rise and leave ministers nowhere near meeting the 2010 target.
In a separate study of 16 to 24-year-olds, the charity YouthNet found that almost all were sexually active and those who had not lost their virginity felt pressured to do so.
A third of the 2,000 young people surveyed claimed to have slept with someone while still under the age of consent. Seven per cent said they had more than 20 sexual partners and 32 per cent admitted to having had a one-night stand or unprotected sex while drunk.
And, how interesting that the government never seems to link this "problem" with the growing STD rate in the UK. Well it's kind of a no brainer...no condom, no protection from either, STDs or pregnancy. These girls are playing at double jeapardy.
And Labour's call to parents? When you tell your children about sex and safety, don't say anything about morality...it's off puttish.
No wonder!
According to news papers in New York City, "CVS STORES in communities of color are far more likely to keep their condoms under wraps than in predominately white neighborhoods, community activists have charged.
A fifth of New York City CVS stores keeps its condoms in locked cases, but that jumps to over half in areas where most of the residents are minorities, according to labor union coalition Change to Win.
The group charges that the lockdown discourages condom use in minority areas, which have been hit especially hard by HIV and AIDS. Of the 17 city CVS stores with secured condoms, 11 were in neighborhoods that were less than half white.
Having to ask a clerk for help is awkward and embarrassing, said Valerie Byrdsong, 33, a shopper at a Harlem CVS where all but a dozen small packs were under lock and key.
"Who wants them all in your business?" she asked. "It should be between you and your partner - not the whole neighborhood."
All CVS stores sell some unlocked condoms, and locked displays are used only in shops "where condoms have been heavily shoplifted," said CVS spokeswoman Joanne Dwyer."
This may bring up questions about racism, but it also begs the question - what else is locked away in these stores? The stuff that is small, popular, and easily palmed. That may be about poverty - and morality? - but the condom and its sellers do not have much control over that, they are business to make money. Consider what happened in many deprived areas of American cities, starting in the 1960s. Local stores closed in droves because they could not make a profit due to theft...perhaps the evils of society should be at question, not the need on the part of a pharmacy chain to stay in business in neighborhoods who, without them, would have no local access to these and other goods. And, are we not always preaching about taking the embarrassment factor out of buying them in the first place? Perhaps this might be a great target for agencies in the business of educating about safe sex to figure out how to push for more openess - and comfort - not just in us, but in buying.
The Inmate and Community Public Health & Safety Act is a bill that would allow nonprofit agencies to distribute 'sexual barrier protection devices' ( condoms) to be distributed in California prisons. This is driven by the need to bring down the incidence of HIV (and other stds) amongst prisoners, but it was vetoed a few weeks ago by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Governor's office said instead that they would see to it that the Department of Corrections would implement a smaller pilot condom distribution program as an alternative.
The bill, which was sponsored by AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) and the Southern California HIV/AIDS Coalition (SCHAC), and was worded so that it would "...require the director to allow any nonprofit or health care agency to distribute sexual barrier protection devices such as condoms or dental dams to inmates, as specified. The bill would also have established...that the distribution of those devices is not a crime nor shall it be deemed to encourage sexual acts between inmates," and that, "...possession of those devices cannot be used as evidence of illegal activity for purposes of administrative sanctions ..."
This makes me uncomfortable at many levels...what do you think?
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