[Sundae]

I don't see how preventing pregnancies among girls below the age of consent can be considered a human rights issue. It is not preventing any woman from having children, it is merely allowing otherwise vulnerable young women the chance to complete their schooling at an age when society does not condone them being in sexual relationships, therefore does not consider them fit parents.

In the real world, I agree that the boys concerned should be targeted by education. Of course it should not be socially acceptable that teenage boys can act like rutting stallions, leaving behind girls to face 18+ years of single parenthood. But at present the bottom line is that apart from a financial contribution there is no way to insist that a boy remains with a child, whereas emotional ties and societal pressures mean that the girl will.

I am not positing obligatory contraception as a punishment for those bad, slutty girls. I am putting it forward as a way of protecting them - the reason I don't sugest it for boys is that they don't necessarily need the same protection. Currently it is girls that visit family planning clinics for free contraception, girls that go to the chemist for the free morning after pill. Boys are just as entitled to go (to family planning clinics I mean) and get free condoms. The fact that they don't means a huge change in behaviour and attitude has to occur BEFORE the main onus of contraceptions falls on men.

The response I remember from the first time the male contraceptive pill was mooted was, "Would you believe a man who told you he was on the pill?" and the answer among my friends and I was, "No!" Even in a committed relationship there was the attitude that a sleepy man asked, "Did you take your pill today dear?" might be included to mumble, "Yes" in the same way he would if asked if he'd put the bins out.

Whatever we want to believe re responsibility for contraception, what we would like to make equal, the bottom line is that no man has to face pregnancy and childbirth. Which means that a girl or woman who doesn't plan to have a baby will always have an added incentive to ensure they don't have one.