Thursday, March 18, 2004
Progress
London, Mar. 18 (CWNews.com) - Almost one in four of all teenage girls aged 16 and 17 in Britain take the contraceptive pill, according to new figures released today.
The proportion has risen from 17 percent in 2000 to 24 percent, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The survey-- which compared figures in 1998/9 with those in 2002/3-- indicates just over a quarter of all women use the contraceptive pill, with the biggest increase in the 16 to 17 age bracket.
Family Planning Association spokeswoman Melissa Dear told the BBC the statistics were "very positive news." She said she said she hoped the figures would dispel the "doom and gloom" surrounding Britain's teenage pregnancy rate, which is the highest in Europe.
However, earlier this week, a report from the Family Education Trust showed that increased and more explicit sex education in British schools has actually increased teenage pregnancies rather than reducing them, according to a new report.
Spokesman Valerie Riches, a Catholic, told the Sunday Times: "The government's teenage pregnancy strategy is based on the premise that it is unrealistic to expect young people to abstain from sex. They have embarked on a damage-limitation exercise dependent on condom use and the morning-after pill."
So this is progress? People are going to do it anyway? I think Mr. Chesterton has some words on this:
Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age. We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things. Progress should mean that that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swift in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy: a wild page from any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it. Progress should mean that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does not mean the the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal: it is easier.
G.K. Chesterton - Orthodoxy
Welcome to the desert of the real.
The proportion has risen from 17 percent in 2000 to 24 percent, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The survey-- which compared figures in 1998/9 with those in 2002/3-- indicates just over a quarter of all women use the contraceptive pill, with the biggest increase in the 16 to 17 age bracket.
Family Planning Association spokeswoman Melissa Dear told the BBC the statistics were "very positive news." She said she said she hoped the figures would dispel the "doom and gloom" surrounding Britain's teenage pregnancy rate, which is the highest in Europe.
However, earlier this week, a report from the Family Education Trust showed that increased and more explicit sex education in British schools has actually increased teenage pregnancies rather than reducing them, according to a new report.
Spokesman Valerie Riches, a Catholic, told the Sunday Times: "The government's teenage pregnancy strategy is based on the premise that it is unrealistic to expect young people to abstain from sex. They have embarked on a damage-limitation exercise dependent on condom use and the morning-after pill."
So this is progress? People are going to do it anyway? I think Mr. Chesterton has some words on this:
Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age. We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things. Progress should mean that that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swift in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy: a wild page from any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it. Progress should mean that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does not mean the the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal: it is easier.
G.K. Chesterton - Orthodoxy
Welcome to the desert of the real.
