Titanic Teens
"Public health officials and doctors have been fighting teen pregnancy for decades now.
"I myself worked for nearly a decade prescribing birth control to teens. I believed that oral contraception was the most powerful weapon I had to help teens avoid life-altering dilemmas. But I realize now that what we've been doing has been akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. We now face a gargantuan consequence of that sexual freedom: At the same time teen pregnancies declined, the STD [sexually transmitted diseases] epidemic shot through the roof. The sexual freedom that birth control allows teens has done a good deal to promote the rise in disease.
"Condoms are no answer either. Condoms do little to prevent many viral infections spread by skin-to-skin contact, especially HPV and herpes."
Dr. Meg Meeker, from her new book, "Epidemic: How Teen Sex Is Killing Our Kids"
From the Washington Times, October 18, 2002