Teenage pregnancy epidemic is over

Must be all those programmes showing birth. Seems to be a pretty painful affair!!!!!

Yes you are probably right LullyDully watching "one born every minute" would be enough to put anyone off for life !

Or it could just be a few years of progress on making sexual health services available in or near school. "My" school (I was governor) certainly turned things round from the days when there was nearly always a girl with a bump in school.
Brook clinics on site every week, free-condom cards given to teenagers of both sexes, pregnancy tests by school nurse.

I wonder if the 'morning-after' pill has made a big difference?

Have councils stopped housing teenage unmarried mothers?

Probably ana but it has been around a long time now. I remember taking it once about 20 years ago.
Before it is useful the girls have to know it exists and have a way of gaining access to it. At one time the school nurse used to take them in the car to the city centre to visit Brook clinic. Very long bus ride.

Oh, I thought perhaps it had only become relatively easy to obtain by school -age girls recently - not really up to date on these matters!

um I think you can get it from pharmacies now, and then you had to have a prescription. But this is not much use if you do not have a pharmacy within walking distance, or you're afraid someone in there will know you. It would take quite a lot of confidence for a 15 year old to walk in and ask the pharmacist for the morning after pill. They don't even know that it is OK to say "no" to boys sometimes.

Yes, I'd imagine that's one of the biggest problems.

what, saying no to boys Yup.
Including when they want to film you with their mobiles and then send the video to their friends. Ever been glad you are not a teenager any more?

Yes, we were very virtuous in our day, weren't we? (Well, I was!)
The fear of pregnancy and the subsequent shame was behind it, of course - girls these days must be under pressure from all sides to conform to the norm for their peers.

There was a headmaster on the radio recently explaining why school sex education was so limited to the mechanics only. He said as soon as the school began to teach about the emotional side of things and about taking time and considering before consummating a relationship the school would be attacked by, on one side libertarian groups who believe everyone of every age should do what ever they want with who ever they want and to teach any kind of restarint is a breach of students human rights and fundamentalist groups who believe even mentioning sex in schools is to force children down the path to disease, disaster and single parenthood.

I wasn't particularly virtuous ana but i remember being terrified in my first year at uni asking the uni doctor for the pill.
flicketyb that does sound like a load of rubbish to me. But maybe he was from an area with particularly stroppy and opinionated parents. My school got harrassed by tabloids once re pregnancy testing. But apart from that not a single comment or question by parents re sex education in 10 yrs. And no complaints about the pregnancy testing etc either.

I was virtuous while I was at school, Jess - certainly as far as full sex was concerned. FlicketyB, what that headmaster said sounds all too plausible.

The morning after pill is very easily obtainable nowadays not just over the counter but also from NHS Walk in Centres. I used to work above a WIC and at opening time on Saturday and Sunday mornings there would usually be at least two or three young girls coming in, often accompanied by friends. Of course I can't know for definite that's what they were coming for but it seemed very likely. And thank goodness they at least had the sense and the facility to do that.