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!
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