KEY POINTS:
It's a well-known fact that when the Booze Fairy is sprinkling his dust, his dirty old mate the Bonk Fairy is never far behind. Drink enough booze and the idea of having sex with a random stranger suddenly seems like a jolly good idea. Sex is everywhere -
it's glossy and gleaming and exciting and enticing.
It's all wrapped up in a gorgeous package and the only decision seems to be whether to do it or not. Contraception, on the other hand, is never discussed. It seems incredible in this open and liberal age that girls today still find it difficult to bring up the subject of contraception and would never carry around condoms for fear of being thought a slut.
And you'd think that these days when boys are supposed to share the burden of an unwanted pregnancy they would bring up the subject.
Do you really want to be paying some lank-haired, emotionally fragile drop-out a significant portion of your salary for the next 16 years just because your sperm hit her ovarian jackpot?
Sex isn't just about making babies, of course. I remember overhearing an old Scottish doctor saying in a shocked voice "The silly wee laddie stuck his willie where I wouldn't put ma brollie!"
As long as there's been bonking, there have been sexually transmitted diseases and in New Zealand, we have more than our fair share.
Chlamydia is such a pretty name for an insidious disease, and then there are all the others - gonhorrea (slightly more onomatopoeic), genital warts and herpes.
Badges of dishonour for the sexual swashbucklers. You don't see those on MTV when the beautiful honeys are pelvic-thrusting around the tattooed rapper. And yet I bet they're there, lurking inside spandex hot pants and low-slung jeans. So this move by the Auckland District Health Board to allow unrestricted access to the morning-after pill is all very well and good but it addresses only part of the problem.
Without wishing to put you off your Sunday morning latte, the number of babies being born with chlamydia is on the rise. Left untreated, the little ones can be blinded. Genital warts can lead to a form of cervical cancer, and herpes, as we know, is forever. And then there's HIV - nobody is immune to that.
So Pandora's box may appear irresistible but when you gain access, be prepared for a whole lot of trouble. Oh sure, the pharmacists are supposed to hand out a free packet of condoms and a pamphlet on other methods of contraception, but that all seems like window dressing.
I agree that unwanted pregnancies are a bad idea. But swallowing a pill and making it all go away seems to be encouraging an even more irresponsible and laissez-faire attitude than we have at present, hard as that may be to imagine.
I don't ever want to go back to the bad old days when women were sent out of town and hidden away until they gave birth to babies who were taken from them immediately and given to families deemed to be more worthy.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with sex between consenting adults. But we have to be more mature in our attitude towards sex.
Sex isn't just a feel-good physical activity - it has the potential to bring about long-lasting repercussions for the individuals and the community at large.
The Auckland DHB planning officer says that removing the financial barrier at pharmacies for the morning-after pill will help people deal with the realities of having unprotected sex. On the contrary - the free morning-after pill is just another way people can avoid having to think about the consequences of living in a sexually liberated society.
