The UK has some:
A multi-million pound initiative to reduce teenage pregnancies more than doubled the number of girls conceiving.
The Government-backed scheme tried to persuade teenage girls not to get pregnant by handing out condoms and teaching them about sex.
But research funded by the Department of Health shows that young women who attended the programme, at a cost of £2,500 each, were ’significantly’ more likely to become pregnant than those on other youth programmes who were not given contraception and sex advice.
A total of 16 per cent of those on the Young People’s Development Programme conceived compared with just 6 per cent in other programmes.
Experts said the scheme failed because it introduced girls ‘at risk’ of becoming pregnant to promiscuous girls they might not otherwise have met.
One young woman in the study had four abortions before reaching the legal age of consent.
But hey, you know, at least government was trying to do something. And their hearts were in the right place.
Which is all that really matters, when you think about it: Doing something.
For the children.
Now how much do we want to be that when the program was first publicly discussed, whatever remnants of social and religious conservatism in Britain said that this was precisely what would happen while the proponents said that they were just trying to shackle people and keep them ignorant?
Somewhere along the line, the discussions seemed to connect abstinence with Christianity. From that point forward, any discussion on abstinence was automatically labeled as some from of a demand for a full theocratic takeover of the world, so….NO ABSTINENCE FOR YOU! became the mantra. You see, we need a separation of Church and State…even in the bedroom, or the backseat, as it may have been more often than not…like Lex said…FOR THE CHILDREN!
Let’s legalize marijuana too. You know, then it won’t be illegal.
I think it’s particularly ironic that the authorities are teaching them how to have safe sex and their peers are teaching them how to hook-up. Which lesson are they learning better?
Gee, Joe, what’s wrong with marijuana?
Let’s look at the real issue here. The UK has Socialized health care. I’ll take any and all bets that the reasoning behind this program was to try to save the Government some money by reducing the number of teen pregnancies. See what we have to look forward to.
Say what now? It has nothing to do with socialized health care and everything to do with the fact that unwed teenage pregnancies are still regarded as a bad thing even by the most sexually liberal (and for good reason). Might as well make the same remarks about American abstinence-only campaigns.
Hey you go to prison an innocent young kid, and come out a novice bank robber who’s received some professional advicefrom experienced bank robbers.
You go to the sex planning clinic an innocent young girl and come out with ball bearings for heels–having received some advice from semi professional sluts.
Who woulda thunk that those results would follow?
I wish I could summarize what Theodore Dalrymple has written on this subject. Suffice it to say that as a prison doctor in England he heard every excuse in the book and had no patience with any of them, and yet is amazingly sympathetic with men doing time because of sex with “underaged” girls. Not children, but teenagers who know how to play the game quite well in England, not unlike the girls in the states who used know that the fastest way out of their mama’s house (for mama alone lived there, no papa in sight) and into their own state-funded apartment was to get pregnant and have a baby. In this case, everybody–from the pop culture to the parents to the welfare system–supports the girls as they seduce grown men to be their sugar daddies, but woe betide the men should they ever scorn the girls.
If you’re not reading Dalrymple, you can’t begin to imagine all the wickedness that goes on behind the scenes of stories such as this, and how effed up so much of England truly is these days.
Zane/
Old Ted is like a God to me–read everything he writes I can get my hands on. He’s a very effective public speaker too. I’ve caught his act on C-SPAN a couple of times before various audiences. Good sense of humor too….And you’re right, the experiences he reveals will water your eyes. But my wife has seen it all here as well in her some 38 yrs of nursing–from Charity Hosp in New Orleans, LA County and MLK (Martin Luther King) in South Central LA, to Luther-Luckett max security prison just outside Louisville, Ky. The stories are all the same, just the names and accents are different. Everytime I breathlessly recall some of Ted’s more outrageous stories/examples to her she just rolls her eyes–she’s already seen it all before. I keep telling her to write a book, but she says: “Hey, Ted baby already has it covered.” Besides, she says, she hates the thought of reliving all that crap just to put it in writing–hell, she says, that’s the stuff she’s trying to forget! LOL.
(That’s why she hates to watch the news–she’s already seen/lived thru 3/4s of the stuff that very shift she just got off of. Same with public policy debates on health-care. She has lived that stuff as both a Dir of Nursing to a floor staff nurse and everything in between. She’s at the stage now where all she wants to watch on TV are mindless comedies to zone out–even tho she works only part time now.)
“Ted baby?” Don’t forget to read him under his other psuedonym, Anthony Daniels.
Zane/
Must be a generational thing. Was quite common in my day to use the term as in: ” ‘Zane baby’ is really in full-tilt boogie mode tonight, isn’t he?” etc.
VX, Yes the term ” … baby” was a quite common expression in your/my day… especially if one was a cool cat helmet-headed ( excessive/criminal use of hair spray…e.g. a young Glenn Campbell) Rat Pack…Ring-a-Ding…Ding… wanna-be as apparently you were… the mind reels in contemplation…Baby. Best
Snake, baby/
Sorry to disappoint. The Rat Pack was a full couple of generations ahead of us–better drink more java, your memory is starting to go… And I was never a hair-spray guy, perish the thought, just blow dry the sucker–or better yet just hop in the convertible and use the 80mph hairdryer option. No “wannabe” here–I WAS, baby–bmoc Wayfarer (in the days BEFORE they became a cult item) Ray-ban wearing/sports-car driving/varsity tennis/Dean’s list/hedonistic/ fraternity-guy party animal–and luvin’ it! Every last second of it! SOME of us can walk and chew gum at the same time….no hair-shirt wearer here!
But the REALLY cool cat on these pages is “dc cat.” Now THERE’s a life-style to be emulated!!
…and from that misspent youth, you became a fighter pilot. Go figure.
VX, Ah… now all is revealed…a Joe College, fraternity boy and Troy Donahue wanna-be…self parody notwithstanding…your hubris is breathtaking. Best
I had a navy chief friend, who’s wife loved to sponsor kids from broken homes. Great couple, saved my navy personna from itself while I was in. Anyway, they had a teenage girl (opinion: I.Q. maybe 90) they fostered for awhile. She went off to job corp IIRC. Brought her back after a year of ‘learning’ a trade. A noble goal wrought wrong because (I believe) there were no adults in charge of the ‘corps’. She learned (by her admission) to become a ‘pro’ because what else would a girl learn to be among the sharks? You were a member of a gang in the program for protection, and were a service to the male members as your dues. What a program! Snitches were summarily dealt with, only a beating as a warning for first a offense. This memory was from 30 years ago now, and I haven’t learned much in the intervening time to change my opinion of government sponsored programs. And the more I see, read, and hear of government run programs experience in the U.K., make me distrust a like mindset of politicians here in the U.S. After all, I see how well those proposed programs here have worked out there. Does that make me a terrorist?
JoeC/
Just disregard that clicking noise in the background on your phone–probably nothing…..
Scott/
Who said it was misspent? As the old saying goes: Seemed like a good idea at the time.
Besides, as I repeat, SOME of us can walk and chew gum at the same time….. 
Scott, Snake/
Upon reflection our little colloquy here reflects something about basic American culture, to wit: most people think that in order to be “serious” about something, one has to also be “solemn” about it–and this goes double for the armed forces here in America–unlike, say, my experiences with the RAF, RN, the RAAF and Aus Army, for that matter, whose collective “culture” has a far different “take” on the matter. I’ve ALWAYS been deadly serious about everything I’ve ever done–it’s just that my personality doesn’t always lend itself to the “solemn” approach. Play hard, work hard, as the old saying goes. Or as one 0-6 I once worked for said to me: “Just remember: If you’re gonna hoot all night with the owls you still gotta get up in the morning and scream with the eagles!”
I was always competitive all my life growing up on a college campus as I did in competition academically with the sons and daughters of the rest of the faculty, and as a multi-sport son of a hall of fame college coach the pressure was always on. I didn’t even date during the school year in HS, considering it too distracting to my studies and athletics–never attended a jr or sr prom–left the dating to the summer when playing the amateur mid-west tennis “circuit”(such as it was in those days). As a result I won a Nat.Merit Scholarship I never used as I went to LSU on a tennis scholarship. I was also a good enough HS footballer that I’ve still have a personal letter from Ben Martin, then the Head coach at the AFA, wanting me to come play for him as a defensive back. I was small for the position even then, but I know/knew how to take (and give) the “big hit.”
In college I was w.o a car for my 1st 2yrs–as my Aunt had said that if I made st As for two yrs straight she’d buy me a new car–which she did. (I should’ve asked for an E-type Jag–they were only going for around 6 grand a pop in those days–but I was too nice a guy to impose THAT much on her pocketbook) We had Sat. classes at LSU my first two yrs there, so I never partied on Fri. nights either–I was in the dorm studying.
Of course I made up for lost time my final two years–but business before pleasure–I could afford to coast by then…pick and chose when to hit it hard…
So, I guess what I’m trying to say, sports-fans, never under-estimate a “party-animal.”
Quite possible that four years of all work / no play in HS created the party animal.
Wilco/
LOL. So true to a degree. A pretty standard story for many HS military school graduates from places like Culver and Georgia Military Academy, etc. Some of the wildest party animals I ever met came from those places. I had 2 fraternity bros from GMI and one of my 1st cousins went to Culver and HIS roommate at Culver turned up as the roommate of one of my frat. bros from GMI in pilot tng at Reese in Lubbock. LOL Calling Kevin “6 degrees” Bacon! Two other Culver products I know were both wildmen also. One, C. J. “Dutch” Duchissois is a multi-millionaire from up your way Wilco. His family Corp owns Arlington Racetrack in Chicago as well as the Fairgrounds in N.O.. Made the original family fortune building rail-roas cars–it’s a mini conglomerate now. He and I met in AFROTC summer camp at Lockborne AFB outside of Columbus Ohio. We had the distinction of the 2 of us getting kicked out of the Holiday Inn West, East, South and Central in Columbus for “party-hardy” activities on weekends. We ran out of time to sample the North branch. LOL!! He was a DEKE at Tulane where he got kicked out for, well, being a DEKE. He then transferred to SMU where he graduated as an AFROTC honors grad, but because of eyes joined the Marines. He was up in I-Corps at Chu Lai with the Ist MAW branch down there when I was up at DaNang. He’s donated tens of millions to SMU–I bet Tulane wishes they had been more tolerant now–had recognized his “inner qualities.” LOL!!