It is well known the UK has a higher rate of teenage pregnancies than other western European countries.
These pregnancies have a lifelong impact on the women concerned and a significant impact on the lives of their children. This, in turn, has an impact on the finances of the country as a whole. From a moral perspective, it is important to simultaneously contemplate the personal tragedy of these cases and the national burden of the problem.
Personally, my father and I attended the same school as the well-known Dr John Billings. The Billings Ovulation Method pioneered both the practical and philosophical framework for managing both fertility and contraception naturally. The philosophy has been praised by successive Popes as the only form of contraception authorized by the Catholic Church, which is no small feat. At the same time, the method has also been hijacked by many app developers who want to snoop on women's fertility due to the immense value of this data for predicting spending habits.
Over half of the teenage pregnancies arise in regions that are already economically deprived.
Close to sixty percent of these pregnancies lead to abortion. In the Catholic faith, we are taught that abortion is always wrong. Whether people feel abortion is acceptable or not, evidence shows that abortion has a lasting impact on the mental health of the mother.
Faith-based schools in the UK are obliged to teach about the full range of topics, including contraception and abortion but they are permitted to teach each of those topics from the perspective of their faith.
This creates a situation whereby the only way parents can influence what their children learn about the theme is by sending them to a faith-based school.
Is it time for the UK to find other ways to deal with this problem? For example, with the growing use of technology in schools, is it possible for each student to receive personalised education on these topics based on the philosophy preferred by their parents? Is it practical for students in the same peer group to be taught alternative approaches? I feel educators must be asked to give parents this choice in every school, not only in the faith schools.
As a permutation of this theme, it is feasible for the state-operated schools to allocate some time each semeester for faith-based educators to come on campus and teach their given philosophy to a segment of the student population, based on the intentions of specific parents.
Finally, when tracking the rates of pregnancies and the rate of abortion in this age group, each of these adverse events can be categorised based on the specific philosophy about relationships each pregnant teenager mother and boyfriend was given at school. This will help understand whether any particular philosophy, taught to male or female students, has an effective preventative impact.
The Relationships & Sex Education (RSE) curriculum needs to be updated to help students understand the risks of sharing their fertility data with the companies creating the apps.
Teaching people how to select genuinely safe open source apps, without sharing their data, needs to be put on a par with teaching safe sex.
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