More Money, More Problems

Britain’s latest campaign to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies—through increased sex-ed and access to contraception—has hit a snag :

The latest study of pregnancy in Britain has shown that the rate of conception among girls under 18 has risen for the first time in five years.

The gloomy report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests that the government’s teenage-pregnancy strategy is going to miss its latest target to halve the rate of pregnancies among girls under 18.

So they start a campaign of sexual education and increased access to contraception to reduce the number teen pregnancies, and the number of teen pregnancies actually goes up. How do they respond? More sexual education and access to contraception:

The government responded to the figures by announcing £19 million in new funding for contraception campaigns.

And there’s a lesson in here for those arguing that the United States should take the same approach if it wants to reduce abortions:

Fewer women carried the pregnancy to term, however. Exactly half, 50 percent, of under-eighteen pregnancies led to an abortion in 2007, an increase on the 48 percent the previous year, the ONS report said.

Want to promote safe sex? Fine. But don’t forget that also means promoting sex. Because while there is a segment of the teenage population that would have sex with or without education—presumably the target group for campaigns like this—there is also a segment that will have sex only after it is encouraged and rationalized by sex-ed and contraception initiatives. The total number of sexually active teenagers will increase, which will in turn increase the number of unintended pregnancies.

What are we left with? A growing number of British teenagers, cheated by their health advocates, who are forced to learn a difficult lesson on their own: that natural acts have natural consequences, no matter how much we try to deny it. And, tragically, this denial is compounded when the natural, living, breathing consequences of sex are being aborted.