In a recent report in the news agency Zenit it was stated that a finding has shown that contraceptives have encouraged many people to engage in sexual relationships that are unfaithful, selfish, short-term, and altered to be sterile, not life-giving. These uncommitted relationships often lead to other problems, such as abortions and sexually transmitted diseases.

The report further pointed out that 17.4 per cent of adults who use condoms still get pregnant within a year. As regards teenagers, this number is higher at 23.2 per cent. Among teens who cohabit and are more sexually active, 71.7 per cent got pregnant within the year. The condom failure rates in protecting against sexually transmitted diseases are even worse.

Rather than protecting girls and young women, contraception risks their physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.

In contrast, a growing – what for statistical purposes is termed as a – ‘population’ of teens who are choosing to postpone sexual activity, shows that abstinence works to decrease abortions.

In a longitudinal study carried out over 10 years from 1991 to- 2001, the number of US young people who reported having had sex decreased by 16 per cent. The number who described themselves as sexually active went down 11 per cent.

The realisation seems to be getting through that greater abstinence means fewer abortions and other complications in life, such as having to carry the guilt of having murdered a defenceless unborn baby.

In another study carried over the decade between 1984 and 2004 the abortion rate among girls under 18 dropped more than 60 per cent and decreased almost 48 per cent for young ladies 18-19. Youth is the important time of preparing for life – disrupting studies and apprenticeships through illicit liaisons condemn those thus engaged in a propensity to join the near or under poverty line numbers.

Thus those who really want to fight poverty should be the first to advise youth to wait for when a strong intention has been nurtured to form a family before engaging in behaviour affecting not only themselves and their partner but a whole conjoined society.

G. Bonett

Marsalforn