Oh dear, Nadine, what on earth are you on about and how on earth did you get Parliament to back your call for teaching abstinence to teenage girls? I may as well be back in the suburbs of Atlanta, in the deep American south, where I lived as a teenager and was subjected to this type of nonsense regularly at school. It is true that I have managed to avoid pregnancy so far in life. Could I be a living, breathing example of the success of abstinence programmes like the ones Nadine is championing? Doubtful.

Abstinence programmes introduced in the USA under George Bush Jr were clear failures – and those were at least aimed at girls and boys. I don’t really know where to begin with Nadine’s suggestion of focusing abstinence ‘training’ on girls only. Not only does it put unfair amounts of responsibility on girls and young women for a clearly joint activity, it also sends a clear message to boys and young men that they don’t need to take responsibility for the consequences of unsafe sex, and that familiy planning is simply outside their remit.

Today’s society needs boys and men to be more involved in decisions about safe sex, relationships, and fatherhood, not less. The disadvantaged communities that suffer the most from high levels of teenage pregnancy are the same one’s struggling with the highest levels of absentee fathers. Taking away young men’s responsibilities around safe sex just supports the idea that they have no responsibility if and when a child does come along. But the right-wingers who support Nadine’s girls-only sex ed classes will be the same ones that moralise about single mums. We girls just can’t win.  

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