Let's Talk About Sex

(http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0514/1224316062865.html)

The Irish Times - Monday, May 14, 2012 Let's talk about sex

‘Bald heads forgetful of their sins ...” Aren’t we all imagining that teenagers are at it all the time, that sexual irresponsibility and promiscuity are rife, and that TV3 reality shows are about reality. Sure, wasn’t Fine Gael’s Michelle Mulherin only warning the other day in the Dail about the abortion culture and fornication (to prompt Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan’s glorious rejoinder: “Hurrah for fornication!”)?

The truth is more prosaic and reassuring. A survey for the HSE conducted by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland on contraception and crisis pregnancy finds that, on the contrary, young people are waiting until they are older to have their first sexual experience, that when they do, increasingly they are using contraceptives and that they are getting more sex education and finding it useful in their relationships.

It’s not all good news, and sometimes for reasons hard to fathom. The survey, for example, records a worrying decline during the last decade in the number of parents who say they discussed sex with their children. A case of leaving it to schools who are doing it better?

The median age at which younger adults (18-25) say they had their first sex is 17 for men, and 18 for women, a largely unchanged picture on 2003. There is a small increase in the number of women who say they had their first sex before the age of 17 (up three to 17 per cent).

Of those having sex for the first time, four in ten say they used contraceptives at the time. Nine in ten of 18-25-year-olds say they did so, an encouraging sign that the message is clearly getting through. There has also been a significant rise in the use of the Pill.

Counterintuitively, such signs of an apparent increase in awareness are also paralled by an overall decline in respondents’ consistent use of contraceptives since 2003 – down five percentage points from 83 per cent. Among the youngest, the trend is reversed, perhaps reflecting the more casual nature of their relationships.

Overall, some 4 per cent of women surveyed say they have had an abortion, double the proportion in 2003. Strikingly, among the 18-25 group, that figure is as high as 14 per cent – one in seven – up nearly a quarter on the decade. Such figures undoubtedly reflect the alarming reality that two thirds of women in the younger age group say they have experienced a crisis pregnancy, up a quarter on respondents a decade ago.

With one-fifth of crisis pregnancies ending in abortion, we are reminded again that it is time to legislate for these women’s plight.