‘Be safe with a condom’ has been the predominant message in sex education in this country for 20 years. More recently a further message has been added, ‘If you make a mistake, use the morning-after pill as a fall-back’. After such a long time two things are clear. The approach has been a failure and they are the wrong messages. And it has failed because they are the wrong messages!
Our young people know more about the condom and have easier access to it than ever before. Yet all time high rates of sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancies out of wedlock prove that more of the same message will make things worse not better.
Why is this? There are technical reasons why the condom will never be the secure barrier that they pretend. For example, many infecting organisms are found outside the area covered by the condom. Then there are common sense reasons why young people use them inconsistently — early sexual intimacy is often unexpected or pressurised. But, most importantly, this message takes away the perceived (and it is only perceived) consequences of extra-marital sex, and so encourages young people to experiment with early out-of-marriage sexual intimacy. There is now more sexual activity with more partners leading to more single parenthood, more unwanted pregnancies, more abortions, more sexually transmitted diseases and more emotional hurt.
