Teen pregnancies double under condom giveaway program

Daily Mail:

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.

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I have noted before that being around other kids who are "doing it" leads more kids to also engage in sex and they do not always do it with protection. The main reason I made this post was to point out that those who claim that abstinence only is a failure have not really weighed those programs against birth control only. It appears that with either program, there is potential for failure when kids are around more promiscuous kids. I suspect that there are more likely to be promiscuous kids in the birth control group.