A successful teenage pregnancy strategy?

The Family Education Trust reports: "A year ago, the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) cited South Tyneside as an example of what could be achieved by fully implementing the teenage pregnancy strategy. The latest figures, however, show a massive 37.5 per cent rise in South Tyneside in 2007, with the result that the area now has its highest teenage conception rates since 2000."

Why am I not surprised?

As I have said before, we need a campaign aimed at reducing promiscuous teenage sex, not one simply aimed at reducing teenage pregnancy. As long as teenagers are promiscuous, they will do enormous damage to themselves and each other, both physical (STIs) and emotional (and spiritual, come to that), and yes, the girls will get pregnant... It's not rocket science!

But a government campaign to encourage virtue is unthinkable - not least because they politicians know their own behaviour wouldn't stand scrutiny, and it would imply the adult population would have to behave better, and it would be ridiculed by those who work in the media: their behaviour and their commercial interests tend in a very different direction...