This month a rural Oregon school district announced its decision to offer condoms to children as young as 11. The new policy was adopted in part because, according to a memo from the superintendent, “every few years, a middle school student either becomes pregnant or is associated with a pregnancy.” The rationale is flimsy, but it speaks to the wider trend of pushing the envelope when it comes to giving kids contraception in school.
Statistics on the availability of condoms nationally in secondary education, particularly in middle schools, are hard to come by. In 1998, Advocates for Youth reported that 418 schools gave out condoms. More recently, in 2006, the CDC said it was 5 percent of high schools. But city-wide programs in places like Chicago are growing and anecdotal evidence suggests that schools serving as free condom dispensatories is becoming old hat by now.
In Boston this spring there was a controversy over condom distribution in the school system. Not over the fact that condoms were being given out to students, but over the design of the wrapper. City schools received condoms from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to hand out to high schoolers that were emblazoned with provocative phrases like “one lucky lady,” “hump one,” and “tasty one.”
Somehow this scandalized parents who were otherwise supportive of their kids’ collecting condoms on the way to class. One mother told the Boston Globe, “I was horrified. As a mother of three teenagers, there was no way I wanted my kids to be given condoms with those wrappers.” Try to wrap your head around that logic.
Speaking of interesting wrappers, New York Daily News reported that city students were welcomed back to school last fall with a vast assortment of condoms from which to choose. Not content to provide condoms for simple utilitarian use, fun features such as “Rough Rider Studded,” “King XL,” “Extra Strength,” “Ultra Sensitive,” “Ultra Thin,” “Ribbed” and even “Assorted Flavors,” were on offer to minors. Far from the professed purpose of safety, these types of condoms sure seem to cross the line into encouraging more sex and experimentation. Homework assignment, kids: figure out the difference between “Ultra Sensitive” and “Ultra Thin!”
Sensibly, the mother of a 12-year-old girl told the paper, “As far as varieties, it’s ridiculous.” Shockingly, she continued, “But I guess they need to know whether it will fit them. These young kids are very mature, and sex is just a norm now.”
According to the Daily News, during the 2011-12 school year the district went through 800,000 condoms. With roughly 240,000 high school students in the New York City public school system, that equates to more than 3 condoms per student.
Also during the 2011-12 school year, the New York Post separately reported that 40 New York school-based health clinics gave 12,721 doses of the morning-after pill, 10,462 packets of birth control pills, 2,117 injections of Depo-Provera and an unspecified number of insertions of IUDs to girls under their care – far higher than the city had previously reported and all without requiring parental notification.
One parent was outraged, “I’m in shock. What gives [then-Mayor Bloomberg] the right to decide, without adequate notice, to give our children drugs that will impact their bodies and their psyches? He has purposely kept the public and parents in the dark with his agenda.”
All these drugs and devices carry risks of side effects and complications associated with administering hormones and performing minimally invasive procedures on minors. Yet the schools keep pushing the boundary.
It’s been a long time since schools were all about reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic. But now they’re adding reproduction to the three R’s, as school administrators find more and more outrageous ways to push contraception on younger and younger kids.
It's about a post by a feminist state leader who's proud of her 15 year old daughter getting an abortion. She thinks she has well-equipped her daughter with sex-ed and contraception, and yet somehow this still happened. I guess because there wasn't enough public school sex ed for the boy.
At one point the mother wrote, "The
truth is my daughter was using condoms. Guess what sometimes they fail.
Especially, when children who aren’t educated in their use like my child
is are the ones placing them on their penis." But earlier in her
screed, she had said, "As we sat down all she kept saying was 'I don’t
know how this happened'
over and over. The truth was in that moment she couldn’t remember having
sex the one time with the young man she was seeing."
So, which is it? The girl couldn't remember and didn't understand or she was using condoms that, guess what, fail?
Kristen Hatten
makes excellent points about how teaching about contraception, or even
how to use them, still doesn't teach emotionally immature hormonal
children to actually follow through to use them.
She says it was "likely there was no
condom":
How can I say such a thing? Well, because every day across the
world about a million girls agree to have sex without a condom because
the boy doesn’t want to wear one and the girl wants the boy to like her.
(Cue that song from Beauty and the Beast that goes, “Tale as old as time…”)
Inevitably, some of those girls get pregnant. And when their feminist mothers – who made sure they got lots of sex ed and access to birth control - ask, “How on earth did this happen?,” they can’t say, “Well, Mom, you taught me everything about sex except how to handle it like an adult woman because I’m not an adult woman.”
Instead they say, “The condom broke.”
I'd never really thought about it before, but it stands to reason that at least half the
time the excuse is "the condom broke," the truth is there was no condom
at all. Especially with girls who should "know better," as this mother said of her daughter, and feel they need to justify their abortions.
You can give kids all the facts and access to condoms and other contraceptives that you want, but they're still KIDS. They aren't mature enough to deal with the realities and emotional aspects of sex and relationships - heck, many women of all ages don't seem to be. Just giving them information without guidance, which liberals often call "judgment," isn't nearly enough.
The mother takes great pains to emphasize how she withheld her own opinions and made sure it was her daughter's choice. But her daughter, and other young girls of that age, just aren't equipped to make and fully understand that decision.
Nowhere is that made more clear than what the daughter says in the end:
Do I regret it? No! Because I know that the spirit I named Mariah will go on to a woman who is ready for her.
Her immaturity and child's ignorance ring so clear. Someday she will realize that her BABY (spirit???) Mariah was a unique human being who had only one shot at life in this world and it was HER choice to kill her. I do not begrudge her the pain and heartache when she comes to this realization as she grows and matures and begins to understand her decision as an adult.
When this happens, I hope she gets the healing she needs, instead of burying it and denying it like so many post-abortive women try to do.
This video for Planned Parenthood that President Obama has made in his official capacity as President of the United States - the end shows www.whitehouse.gov - saddens, sickens, and angers me. Of course, it's not a surprise that a man who voted for infanticide would so lovingly embrace the biggest abortion provider in the country, but it should still outrage us and renew our commitment to fight.
In the video Obama says:
“So when some professional politicians casually say that they’ll get rid of Planned Parenthood, don’t forget what they’re really talking about: eliminating the funding for preventive care that millions of women rely on and leaving them to fend for themselves."
No, Mr. President, don't YOU forget what we're really talking about: the elimination of millions of unborn babies from our population and abortion as "preventive care."
President Obama says Planned Parenthood fights for "the woman with a new lease on life because a mammogram caught her cancer in time" - except Planned Parenthoods don't do mammograms, they only refer them - and "the woman who was able to choose when to start a family because she could afford contraception." I thought women weren't able to afford contraception and that's why Obamacare made it "free," but now he's saying Planned Parenthood is doing the job? Good! I expect he'll repeal the contraception mandate that violates religious conscience at any moment!
The President finishes with the perfect call to action for conservatives and pro-lifers to defeat him at the polls this November: "I know you’ll never stop fighting to protect the health care and the choices that America’s women deserve and as long as I have the privilege of being your president, neither will I."
President Obama alluded to Mitt Romney saying he'd get rid of Planned Parenthood's funding - which amounts to over $360 million dollars from federal, state, and local taxpayers of PP's Billion dollar yearly budget (check out the page labeled 29 of their 2008-09 annual report). Planned Parenthood takes lives and commits crimes, they do not deserve our hard-earned tax money. Luckily, so far 9 states have defunded Planned Parenthood of over $60 million, but we need more states and the federal government to kick PP of the dole. But as long as Obama is president, Planned Parenthood will remain strong, so we need to kick him out as well.
After going to an Andrew Breitbart memorial event on Saturday, I am more inspired than ever to fight back against the Left. Three things that were said stood out to me in that regard. Number one, Dana Loesch said we need to follow Breitbart and hit Leftists by "calling them out by name." Then Brandon Darby mentioned that the Left was taking advantage of our grief and we were losing on Limbaugh. Finally, I'm struck with the image of Breitbart himself in this tribute video looking straight at the camera and simply saying, "War."
This is war. I am going to defend Limbaugh from the radical Leftists who want to take him off the air. And I am going to call out our opponents by name. Starting with Sandra Fluke, David Gregory and David Friend.
Sandra Fluke.
Sandra Fluke is a 30 year old woman who is president of Law Students for Reproductive Justice and went to Georgetown Law despite knowing that their insurance does not cover birth control - because they are a Catholic institution - and made it her mission to force them to change their policy. Remember when I mentioned how feminazis lied and said a Congressional hearing on religious concerns about the Obamacare contraceptive mandate was only men? They had wanted Sandra Fluke to testify - I guess Allison Dabbs Garrett and Dr. Laura Champion, the two women who DID testify at the "all-male" panel, just don't count as women because they don't toe the radical feminist line.
When the 30 year old woman, Sandra Fluke, did finally speak, she claimed that she and her fellow law school attendees were suffering under the strain of paying for their own birth control out of pocket - she said it costs $3,000 over a 3 year law school term!
I have no idea what kind of birth control she was claiming cost $3,000. Out of pocket, condoms are free or about $1, the Pill costs as low as $4 a month/ $10 over three months, an IUD is $500 but lasts 5 years, etc. There really is not a birth control that should cost $3,000 over 3 years (you can't count the first doctor's visit because obviously the yearly OB-GYN exam is covered by her insurance), this woman is vastly overpaying. You'd think by age 30 she'd have shopped around and figured out the most economical solutions to her problem. Why does her Catholic law school - and the rest of us - have to pay for her bad shopping choices?
[UPDATED: On February 7th, before her testimony, Georgetown's law newspaper wrote about some of her background in radically crusading on this issue, including a campaign to lobby GU and the Obama Administration, and even a sex discrimination claim. She explicitly says she wants to make GU's policy illegal:
Former LSRJ Co-President Sandra Fluke, 3L, organized a lobbying
campaign to try to persuade the university to reverse course before the
mandate was announced in August 2011. When the campaign was
unsuccessful, the group turned its efforts to lobbying the Obama
administration to extend the mandate to universities like Georgetown,
and even considered filing a sex discrimination claim against the
school.
“We’re very excited that these regulations may make that unnecessary
and would make it crystal clear to the administration that continuing
this policy would be illegal,” Fluke said.
Another blogger dug into her background and wonders if she's being managed by the Glover Park Group.]
In regards to Rush Limbaugh, he was making the point that she wants others to pay for her to have sex. She wants to be paid for having sex by forcing Catholics and their insurers (i.e. every one of us who will be forced to buy insurance under Obamacare) to pay for her birth control. He literally shouldn't have said "slut" because a slut doesn't get paid and he later retracts, but he did also say "prostitute," which better fit his analogy. Clearly not a well thought out rant as he goes back and forth on several words. Here is the transcript from 2/29/12 for which Rush has since apologized:
"RUSH: What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps. (interruption) The johns? We would be the johns? No! We're not the johns. (interruption) Yeah, that's right. Pimp's not the right word. Okay, so she's not a slut. She's "round heeled." I take it back."
Ridiculously, but predictably, Democrats are seizing on Rush Limbaugh's statement to do two things they love to do: change the subject and raise money. Even the President of the United States took time out of his busy day (presumably filled with strategy sessions on how to save our economy, lower the price of gas, and get Americans back to work) to call this 30 year old woman who shamelessly told the world about her overspending problem (hey, they have something in common!).
In response, Laura Ingraham tweeted, "Ed Schultz called me a slut last May...still waiting for Obama's call" (more on Schultz later). Don't forget this is the same president who whined about having to take more pictures with the troops! I hope he called from the DNC and not the White House because this was a purely cynical campaign op and Democrats are raising millions off this and the media are making in-kind contributions with all the attention they've brought to the issue - which brings me to David Gregory.
David Gregory.
David Gregory is the host of NBC's Sunday morning show "Meet the Press" who spent the first 5 minutes of his interview with Newt Gingrich this week trying to push the liberal line on Limbaugh and birth control. God Bless Newt Gingrich for slapping back at Gregory - Newsbusters recorded Newt's great response:
"You know, David, I am astonished at the desperation of the elite media to avoid rising gas prices, to avoid the President's apology to religious fanatics in Afghanistan, to avoid a trillion dollar deficit, to avoid the longest period of unemployment since the Great Depression, and to suddenly decide that Rush Limbaugh is the great national crisis of this week."
Newt continued:
"There is no debate about access to contraception. There is a debate, which Cardinal George of Chicago has pointed out, is a war against the Catholic Church. You do have this weird situation where President Obama apologizes to Islamic extremists while waging war against the Catholic Church."
David Gregory: useful idiot of the Left. I hear the other Sunday morning shows made the issue a focus as well, but Gregory has the distinction of getting his butt whooped on it so I wanted to rub it in and highlight Newt's great response.
Video of the Newt v. Gregory exchange:
David Friend.
David Friend is an Obama campaign donor and the CEO of Carbonite who decided afterRush Limbaugh apologized to still withdraw ads from his program, despite the fact that Carbonite still advertises for other men who call women sluts, Ed Schultz and Howard Stern. Friend wrote on the Carbonite website explaining the decision to drop advertising:
“No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. ..."
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that he has no idea that Fluke is in her 30's. He probably thinks, like the myth the media has been perpetuating, that she's of undergrad college age. I can't imagine him bringing up his own daughters or calling her a "young lady" (how patronizing, by the way) unless he thought she was in the 18-22 range, but I guess it's possible. And if that's the case, then he should be equally upset that Laura Ingraham, a woman in her 40's (an age his daughters will be someday), was called a slut by Ed Schultz, one of the men his company sponsors. Ben Howe's on the case asking, Carbonite Drops Ads from Rush Limbaugh but Not Ed Schultz?
And how about him calling Fluke "courageous and well-intentioned?" Puh-LEAZE! As if she was an innocent victim who was thrown into this, instead of an adult liberal activist who crusaded on this issue and ran to the press and the world to demand that the government force the religious institution she attends to violate its beliefs and give her contraception for free. Begging for a government handout is not courageous and her years of activism on this very issue shows she was not well-intentioned. Fluke knew full well what she was getting into and as Ed Morrissey said, "If you want your sexual choices to remain private, don’t use the government to force other people to subsidize them."
Before they made the decision to pull their ads, Friend said that "the outcry over Limbaugh is the worst we’ve ever seen." Well, Dittoheads, let's make the outcry over them dropping Limbaugh the worst they've ever seen! Here is Carbonite's contact page, and be sure to Tweet them and Facebook them!
This is war. We lost an amazing leader when Breitbart died, but pieces of him live on in the hearts of millions of us now. He is still here.
UPDATE: People are having fun with making petitions on WhiteHouse.gov:
I stand with Rush Limbaugh and appreciate the massive contribution
that he has made to the conservative movement and our nation over the
last 25 years. Rush has apologized. But the radical left will never
accept it because they despise him and want him off the air. I condemn
attempts by radical left-wing organizations and the media to censor Rush
and his commonsense conservative message.
"The birth control benefit underscores the fact that birth control is basic health care, and is fundamental to improving women’s health and the health of their families."
No, Planned Parenthood, birth control is NOT "basic health care."
Unlike abortion, which stops a beating heart and ends a life, I am pro-choice when it comes to contraception. However, contraceptives are, on the whole, not a health care need, but a lifestyle want. The vast majority of women don't use contraception because they need to prevent pregnancy for their health but because they don't want children at that particular point in time in their lives, for whatever reason, that's fine to me. They choose the birth control that they want based on things like convenience or side effects - perhaps using a barrier method to avoid bad ones like weight gain or using hormonal contraceptives to gain good ones like clearing up acne. Ok, all well and good, but here's the rub: these are not real medical or health reasons and they do not deserve to be force-subsidized by religious objectors who consider it a sin or even just by regular Americans who don't think it's their business to pay for it! As IMAO_ said: If you want contraceptives to be a personal matter, you probably shouldn't force other people to pay for it. Not to mention the fact that you're trading in a whole lot of freedom to the government for no co-pay.
No, Planned Parenthood, birth control is NOT "fundamental to improving women’s health."
In fact there are many cases in which it hurts women's health. There are many known serious risk factors related to hormonal birth control including several cancers (cancer.gov cites an increased risk for breast, cervical, and liver cancerfrom oral contraceptives). The first thing the drug label says for Depo-provera is "Women who use Depo-Provera Contraceptive Injection may lose significant bone mineral density." Even Planned Parenthood lists the serious and potentially fatal side effects for contraceptives with estrogen like the pill, the patch and the NuvaRing as heart attack, stroke, having a blood clot in the legs, lungs, heart, or brain, or developing high blood pressure, liver tumors, gallstones, or yellowing of the skin or eyes (jaundice). (Interesting aside - Planned Parenthood lists these risks under the section labeled "What are the Disadvantages of xxx" and not under "How safe is xxx." Seems like it should be the opposite. Or both.) Those are rarer but more serious risks, more common risks include weight gain, depression/mood swings, decreased libido, nausea, and headaches. Not the worst, but not fun and certainly not an improvement.
Of course, as Jim Geraghty notes, there may be some women with real medical reasons who genuinely need help paying for birth control, but we should tailor policies for those specific needs, not issue a blanket ultimatum that all women - regardless of need or ability to pay - should get it for free, which is HUGELY expensive and will raise the premiums for everyone who has insurance (i.e. all of us, under Obamacare.)
No, Planned Parenthood, birth control is NOT fundamental to improving "thehealth of [women's] families."
Come on, is that a joke?! Is there a PP press release generator that randomly spits out combinations of words like "women," "health," and "families" and whatever it comes up with is published? Not even going to bother ...
Read more on my discussion of the Obamacare contraceptive mandate here:
There's a meme going around in the media that 99% of women are on birth control. First of all, if this is true, clearly there is no crisis of accessibility or cost - 99% is as universal for coverage as you'll ever get. And if 99% of women already have a way of getting or paying for birth control, then why in the world do we need to make it free through an Obamacare mandate?? But anyway, we need to examine this 99% stat.
The 99% figure comes from Planned Parenthood's old research firm, the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. For this discussion, we will make the leap that Guttmacher's figures are reliable despite their bias. In a 2010 fact sheet titled Facts on Contraceptive Use in the United States, Guttmacher says, "Virtually all women (more than 99%) aged 15–44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method."
#1: This stat by definition includes women who have had sex only once and/or have only used contraceptives once. This is not saying 99% of women are using birth control currently but have used it at least once in their lifetime. In fact they explicitly say that "62% of the 62 million women aged 15–44 are currently using a method." 62% is still a lot but it's not 99%, but ...
#2: Note the use of the word "method" in the previous quote - there's a big distinction between using a "method" and "contraceptive use" which the fact sheet has in its title and subheadings. "Use" implies using a contraceptive device, rather than doing something that would prevent conception. This is important because to get their 99% figure, they include withdrawal and periodic abstinence (natural family planning,etc.) as contraceptive methods!
Really, Guttmacher, you include women who have only had sex once and their partner "pulled out" to say 99% of women have used birth control??
#3: They also include the permanent (at least in intention) one time procedure of getting a tubal sterilization or vasectomy, which combine to be a plurality of contraceptive "use" (about 37%, with the Pill #1 by itself at 28%). Emergency contraception - a potential abortifacient - is included under "other." In this Obamandate conversation, contraception, abortifacients and sterilization have been separated into their own categories.
#4: Along with vasectomy, the male condom is included in this chart, so these should not be included in any stat on the use of birth control by WOMEN. And to the kind of people offended that yesterday's hearing on the Obamandate only had men on the panel because they think contraceptives are only a women's issue are wrong: this is a reminder that it's a men's issue, too. By the way, the panel was all men DID have women (more below in an update), but was a majority men because the focus was on religious objections to the mandate and religious experts or priests, rabbis, etc. are predominantly male.
#5: The fact sheet says "only 7% of women aged 15–44 are at risk for unintended pregnancy but are not using contraceptives." This does not address WHY these women are not using contraceptives - maybe they don't care either way if they get pregnant - but Democrats seem to assume it is because they're not handed out for free. So, we're forcing EVERYONE to subsidize ALL women's birth control for Obamacare - including those who can pay, those who already get it free or at a discount - because up to 7% of women "at risk" are not using it???
That's the real story behind the 99% myth and its relevance to the Obamandate.
UPDATE: Great quote from one of the women on the Obamandate Congressional panel (my emphasis) via Heritage:
"This debate is not about whether women have the right to obtain these drugs. Rather, this debate is about whether those who believe that contraceptives or abortifacients violate their religious convictions must pay for them. There is a vast difference between the right to make a purchase for oneself and requiring someone else to pay for it."
Read more on why I oppose this Obamacare contraceptive mandate here:
First the Planned Parenthood-Komen kerfuffle, now contraception? Who would have thought 1 year ago that we would be battling the culture wars again 9 months before a presidential election when the economy's in the tank. Well, maybe Obama. And that's the point. As Dick Morris said this week:
It's a deliberately calculated move on his part. The Democrats realized that abortion is no longer a winner for them. So what they're trying to do now is replace it with contraception.
So far it seems to be working - not only are they distracting from Obama's economic and foreign policy failures, they're trying to wedge moderates against the GOP on social issues. It astounds me that Obama and liberals have been able to turn the truth of an Obamacare mandate forcing religious objectors to pay for contraception into the hysterical liberal lie that REPUBLICANS WANT TO BAN CONTRACEPTION!!!!11!
[Glenn Reynolds: "It’s as if we passed a law requiring mosques to sell bacon and then,
when people objected, responded by saying 'What’s wrong with bacon?
You’re trying to ban bacon!!!!'"]
A woman who works for the Catholic church is not "banned" from getting contraception; she has access to it, she just can't get the church to foot the bill. If she wants contraception she can pay out of pocket. And don't give me the "what if she has to choose between buying birth control pills or eating dog food??!" sob story, there are plenty of pharmacies that offer discounts and free clinic programs that help low income women - she could even go down to her local high school and grab some free condoms from the office basket for all I care! [Update: 2 recent headlines: California counties get federally-funded teen mail-order condom program and Pa. vending machine dispenses 'morning-after' pill] Bottom line: with or without this mandate, contraception will remain available and accessible, the only difference is who pays for it, how, and at what price.
There is absolutely no reason for contraception to be universally free on demand for anyone who wants it and certainly no reason - logically or morally - for the government to unilaterally force insurers give it out free. Granting this kind of power to the federal government is truly troubling - and it should be a concern no matter which ideological end of the spectrum you sit. Turn about is fair play.
Hey liberals: You know that if the Obamacare law has the power to mandate the right to free birth control, it also has the power to ban it, right? As Rush Limbaugh said, "Obamacare could ban contraception. Once Obamacare is implemented, the government can make any change unilaterally it wants." As in, the next president, (oh, let's REALLY give them chills!) maybe Santorum, can not only change that mandate, but replace it with whatever other mandate he wants because the law gives him that power. As they say, "A government big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away."
If the government can force insurers to cover birth control for free, and can force you to buy health care, what CAN'T it force companies and citizens to do? I am very afraid that if the Supreme Court does not declare Obamacare unconstitutional we will find out.
UPDATE: Last year Jenny Erikson wrote about her experience buying birth control even though (GASP!) her insurance didn't cover it, and she says of the mandate:
This isn’t about helping women obtain contraceptives; this is about exerting control over yet another portion of U.S. business. Women already have access to birth control for little or no money. Medicaid (government-sponsored medical care for those that meet income guidelines) covers contraceptives. Planned Parenthood hands out condoms like they’re candy. Walmart fills birth control pill prescriptions for as little as $9 per month.
...
The only thing this birth control mandate will do is remove the cost of contraceptives from women that can afford it, and shift it to everyone else in the form of their premiums going up. Which means that people barely managing their payments every month will have to scrimp elsewhere, or drop their coverage and get on the government plan. After all, it will soon be illegal to be without health insurance.
Pro-"choicers" like to say that if only there was more access to contraceptives there wouldn't be so many pregnancies and abortions. However, a peek at Great Britain where they do provide access more freely shows they have seen an increase in pregnancy and abortion.
Out of around 40,000 pregnancies more than 20,000 were terminated - the first time more had chosen this option than become mothers.
The figure is higher than 2007, when it just hit 50 per cent, and consistent with a steady upwards trend since the Government started its controversial Teenage Pregnancy Strategy in 1999.
Figures out on May 21 will also show that for the first time the number of abortions performed on women living in England and Wales topped 200,000.
The teenage pregnancy strategy, which has cost taxpayers more than £300million, was meant to halve the number of conceptions among girls under 18 in England between 1998 and 2010.
Ministers have tried to slash teenage pregnancies by freely handing out contraceptives and expanding sex education.
But the fall in pregnancy rates has not met Government targets, and in 2007 the rate actually rose.
Teenage pregnancy rates are now higher than they were in 1995. Pregnancies among girls under 16 - below the age of consent - are also at the highest level since 1998.
So the numbers went up at precisely the time they were working to reduce them. What was the government doing all this time to prevent teen pregnancy as the rates rose?
A Department of Health spokesman said: 'One of the key aims of this Government, as set out in the Sexual Health and Teenage Pregnancy Strategies, is to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and consequently abortions, through better access to contraception.
'Prescribed contraception is available free of charge under NHS arrangements, and the Department of Health has recently invested additional funds to allow for improvements in contraception services.'
Did you read that? "Prescribed contraception is available free of charge!" Contraception is literally freely available and yet pregnancy and abortion rates have gone through the roof! Perhaps it is more of a cultural problem.
Abortion proponents are pleased with this result:
Ann Furedi, of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, has claimed: 'The fact that teenagers felt able to end their pregnancy in abortion is actually a positive sign.
'If they have other plans for their teenage years aside from motherhood, they felt more able to make that choice.'
Great, so throwing money and birth control at the problem not only is useless and counterproductive, it also leads to a greater acceptance and celebration of choosing abortion, which I guess is what the pro-"choicers" wanted all along. Funny how that works.
