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Government's teen pregnancy strategy undermines parents and betrays children says SPUC
London, 11 November 2009 -
The government has today accepted all the major recommendations of the latest
report by the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group http://is.gd/4StJT (see Note 1 below). The
report's major recommendations include teaching children about abortion and
removing the 9pm television watershed on condom promotion. (See Note 2 below for
other major recommendations of the report).
John Smeaton, director of the
Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), commented: "The report
accepted by the government contains several appalling major recommendations. The
government is trying to suppress the right of parents to be primary educators of
their children, a principle enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. The state is also attempting to make parents and schools complicit in
introducing children into an adult culture of sexual activity and abortion. The
Teenage Pregnancy Strategy is a disastrous failure which has contributed to the
rise in abortions and sexually transmitted infections among young people. SPUC
is writing to schools, urging them to resist the goverment's
manipulation."
Note 1: In a written
ministerial statement today, the department for children, schools and families
said that: "The Government has taken forward all the major recommendations
including making sex and relationships education statutory within Personal,
Social, Health and Economic Education from 2011."
Note 2: The Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group report's major recommendations include:
- "The Government's current review of SRE should...
- ...[s]tate clearly that all schools including faith schools must teach all aspects of SRE within the context of relationships in an anti-discriminatory way; contraception, abortion and homosexuality are all legal in this country and therefore all children and young people should be able to learn the correct facts
- ...[m]ake explicit links to young people's advisory services and provision of contraception and sexual health services and demonstrate this by teaching young people how to access services"
- "abortion and contraceptive services should be joined up at national and local level so that the cost-benefits of contraception, particularly long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), can be set against the greater costs of terminating an unwanted pregnancy"
- "the removal of the restriction on promoting condom use before the 9pm watershed"
- "government should continue to provide strong leadership to champion the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy"
