SPUC-TEENAGE PREGNANCIES-WHY WE ARE FAILING 

'In order to understand the factors that really contribute to teenage pregnancy, we need to ask: why is it that some youngsters decide to have sex and others don't? For some it may be peer pressure, for others the influence of drink or perhaps just curiosity. One of the biggest factors in the decision is the youngster's attitude to pregnancy. Some teenagers actively want to get pregnant, and providing family planning is unlikely to change anything for this group. Other youngsters are keen to avoid pregnancy. Providing family planning makes these youngsters believe they are less likely to get pregnant and, as a result, more of them are likely to have sex. We are sometimes told, "Young people are going to have sex anyway - nothing will change that". Well, think about the following scenario. Say 100 youngsters have decided to have sex. Now say we were to remove all access to any form of family planning. Would all 100 still decide to have sex? Of course not! Those who want to get pregnant will still have sex. Some of the others will too, perhaps due to ignorance or peer pressure. However, at least some of those who are really keen to avoid pregnancy will now decide to abstain from sex.                                                                

The bottom line is that providing family planning in schools is likely to have two effects. Those girls who would have had sex anyway are less likely to get pregnant because they have greater access to contraceptives. However, the number of pregnacies among those girls who start to have sex as a result of providing family planning is likely to increase, because if they weren't having sex at all they wouldn't get pregnant. We can only judge the overall effect by looking at the evidence. In fact, my research, recently published in the Journal of Health Economics, shows that increasing access to family planning for youngsters simply has not reduced teenage pregnancy rates^.2 Many other papers have come to a similar conclusion. In the case of the morning-after pill, a study published in the British Medical Journal found that youngsters who were prescribed the morning-after pill were more likely to go on to have abortions at a later stage.³ Rather worryingly, little or no research has examined the impact of these types of policies on rates of sexually transmitted diseases.

There are two possible ways to interpret the finding that family planning has not reduced teenage pregnancies. One is that access to family planning removes a restraint on those teenagers who would otherwise not engage in sex. The other interpretation is that access to family planning has no effect on youngsters' behaviour at all. Either way, it seems very unlikely that recent proposals to provide condoms and the morning-after pill to youngsters at school without their parents knowing will help in reducing teenage pregnancies.' 

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