Misplaced outrage.

From this article on the BBC on teen pregnancy -


"Young girls too often feel pressurised to have sex without protection.

"To change this we need better education in schools and better social mobility.

"Too many young people do not feel they have real opportunities in life that would encourage them to make sure they do not get pregnant."

Or maybe we need to teach boys and men not to pressure girls into sex without protection.

To be fair, this may well be something the person quoted supports and is including is 'education', but just didn't make explicit. Or maybe she did and the journalist chose not to include it in the article. But girls are the ones that get pregnant, and therefore the ones that the rest of her quote seems to apply to. The implication is that girls need to understand better what pregnancy would mean for them in order to better resist the pressure to risk it. The responsibility over contraceptive choices is entirely placed on girls' shoulders.

One of the many things that bothers me about media coverage of teenage pregnancy is the complete disappearing of the men and boys getting teenage girls pregnant. And some of those men and boys being sexually violent and abusive seems to cause nowhere near the outrage and hand-wringing that teenage pregnancy in itself does.

Girls being pressured into kinds of sex they don't want is a problem whether or not it has an impact on teenage pregnancy rates. It's a problem because it's sexual abuse.

Boys need to be taught that pressuring a girl into sex without protection is bad not because getting her pregnant might damage their life-chances, but simply because it's wrong.