Morals and Contraceptives!

It is reported that, in England and Wales, a pilot scheme is to be introduced next year whereby the Contraceptive Pill will be available from chemists without a prescription. Like doctors, pharmacists will be able to give the Pill to girls under 16 without their parents’ consent if they believe that they are at risk of becoming pregnant.

Surely this is yet another ill-conceived (no pun intended!) idea from this increasingly desperate government! My fear is that many boys will see this as the green light to have ‘unprotected’ penetrative sexual intercourse, safe in the knowledge that no pregnancy will result! What they may not realise is that even the Pill does not have a 100% success rate. However, of even greater concern is the obvious potential for a rapid increase in STDs. Fewer teenage pregnancies may well be a laudable objective – but at the cost of increased numbers of young people (of both genders) suffering from syphilis, chlamydia, AIDS; herpes, and gonorrhoea and all of the others ... ??

Add to this the recent research by Lloyds Pharmacy that informs us that the 'average' person in the U.K. has 7.65 sexual partners in their lifetime (somebody must have 15 just to make up for me!), leading to a potential infection rate of 2,811,024 as disease is spread to each of those people's partners - and to each of theirs, etc.

I would suggest that having the highest teenage birthrate in Western Europe is due more to a lack of Mr Brown’s famous 'moral compass' than it is to lack of contraceptive devices. The erosion of family values (especially under the present government); the lack of parental responsibility; and the high number of children being raised with no adequate male role-model; are all factors that must be taken into consideration.

What is even more disturbing is the statistic that 50% of all teenage pregnancies end in abortion: the deliberate ending of the life of an unborn human being when it is at its most vulnerable.

There is still no successful alternative to the old-fashioned values of chastity before marriage, and fidelity within it. It is a simple, and incontrovertible, fact that if these values were universally practised (even I may dream!), there would be no more STDs and only rarely an ‘unwanted’ pregnancy.

Promiscuity is not all that it is cracked up to be – and may even carry within itself the seeds of its own destruction!