Schools that give out condoms post higher teen fertility rates, study indicates
A new study shows that the distribution of condoms to public school students in the U.S. increases teen fertility by 10 percent.
Conducted by Kasey Buckles and Daniel Hungerman of the University of Notre Dame, the study focused on condoms, considered as "relatively less effective method of birth control—one-year failure rates for condoms are more than double those of the Pill."
The researchers found "clear evidence that access to condoms in schools leads to an increase in teen fertility."
Access to condoms for the entire high-school aged population in a county would result to about 5 extra births per 1,000 teenage women or 10 percent increase.
Condom distribution in schools in the U.S., the study said, began in the 1990s.
"Our work shows that, in fact, condom access—at least through schools—did not play a role in the decline in teen fertility in the 1990s," the study concluded.
Valerie Huber, president and CEO of Ascend (formerly the National Abstinence Education Association), was not surprised by the results of the study.
She said a survey by Barna Group conducted with Ascend found that one in five teens said sex education classes made sex like an expectation.
"If condom demonstrations have that impact in a classroom, condom distribution in the school is going to have at least that same kind of effect. We're not surprised that it would encourage sexual activity," she said, according to LifeSiteNews.
According to social scientist Dr. Michael New, the study "adds to a substantial body of research which shows that efforts to encourage contraception use through legalisation, distribution or subsidies are ineffective at best or counterproductive at worst."
He said the Guttmacher Instituted acknowledged that birth control pill in the 1960s resulted in higher rates of teen sexual activity.
Huber said programmes that say teen sex is normal and part of adolescent development combined with condom distribution in schools mean that schools are saying that "'hey, as long as you use this, you don't have to worry about any of the consequences.'"
