'Vaccinating' girls against pregnancy problematic

A Jadelle implant provides pregnancy prevention for up to five years. Photo / File

Should adolescent girls be vaccinated against pregnancy?

It's a nice, neat idea to vaccinate young women against pregnancy.

The sort of idea that would come from people who've examined statistics, looked at cause and effect and found a solution. Something academics are good at.

This week, in an article written by a group from Otago University published by the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, academics called for free, universal, long-lasting contraception to be offered to young New Zealand women, preferably before they become sexually active.

They weren't specific about when the contraception should be offered - that would be a matter for discussion and debate, they said.

But, reading between the lines, 13 seemed to be a good start point - a time when most young women are beginning secondary school and are developing physically.

Three long-lasting contraceptives are available in this country - the Jadelle implants, that are inserted under the skin of the arm; the Mirena, a plastic intrauterine device (IUD) and then there's a copper IUD.

I haven't experimented with any of these forms of contraception but I would imagine if a doctor had put any device inside me when I was 13 years old, that would have put me off wanting any foreign object up there for the rest of my life. Perhaps that's what the researchers are hoping will happen.

There's no doubt that in the main, teen pregnancy is not a great outcome for a young woman or her baby. Some young women are able to learn the skills they need to be a good parent, as well as continuing their education, but it's a tough road and they need a great deal of support.

More often, teen mothers - and it's generally the girls left holding the baby - battle financial insecurity, isolation, judgment and reduced opportunities.

Given New Zealand's rate of teen pregnancy is one of the highest in the developed world (second behind the United States), it's no wonder social policy researchers are concerned.

However, if you translate the statistics, 50 young women out of 1000 are getting pregnant.

Is it really appropriate to insert long-lasting contraception in the bodies of the 950 girls who won't be having sex or getting pregnant?

And what about the health implications of hormones being released into the bodies of young women who are still developing, physically as well as emotionally? Then there is the issue of sexually transmitted diseases - an IUD won't keep you safe from them.

The Family Planning Association is opposed to the idea as they believe "vaccinating" young women against pregnancy puts the onus of responsible choices on to the shoulders of young women, giving the blokes a free pass. And it does.

They believe young women should be able to have a choice when it comes to contraception and that young men should be using condoms, no matter what form of contraception young women are on. Well, good luck with that message getting through.

Despite half a century of female sexual emancipation, it seems young women are more concerned about pleasing and placating their sexual partners than they are about protecting themselves.

The Family Planning Association says making responsible choices is all about education and the fact that New Zealand has a haphazard approach to teaching the subject in schools isn't helping.

There's no doubt that some of our young people are light years ahead of where many of us were at the same age. Even 15 years ago, I can remember being shocked when my daughter informed me that the big scandal du jour at her intermediate school was one of her 11-year-old classmates being asked for oral sex by her 11-year-old boyfriend.

It was about the time of the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair and I'm putting the blame squarely on the shoulders of the former US president. Half of me wanted to ask what the boy was offering in return; the other half just wanted to pretend the conversation had never happened.

But burying our heads in the sand as parents and hoping that our children are safe in the bubble of love and light that we put around them is failing in our duty as parents.

I was lucky to be able to talk to my daughter openly - well, as openly as any teenage girl will talk to her mother - and I accept not every adult and child has that relationship.

Sex is about so much more than not getting pregnant and I think the researchers are missing the point on that. It's about a desire to be wanted, a desire to belong and, far too often, it's about power and control.

One of the correspondents to my radio show had an excellent take on the issue: vasectomies are a low cost, relatively simple operation these days. What's more, they're reversible. So why not offer free, universal vasectomies to all 13-year-old boys who can then reverse the vasectomy if they want children in the future? Surely that's a suggestion as worthy of debate as inserting IUDs in the uteruses of the nation's adolescent girls, or pumping them full of hormones.