Some girls faced with longterm unemployment see pregnancy and motherhood as a career option, without thinking through the implications on the rest of their lives. They need to be shown the unromantic reality of coping twenty-four hours a day with the responsibility of a baby, and all the restrictions that it entails.
Certainly another big factor has to be lack of anticipation. Unprotected intercourse often happens when it is unplanned, yet taking a condom along to a party means admitting that you are expecting intercourse. Interestingly, a recent British study showed that eighty-five percent of sixteen- to twenty-year-old males now believe that girls should carry condoms, so that attitude appears to be changing.
Adolescent health workers tell me that one of the reasons girls give for having unprotected intercourse is that they want to find out if they can conceive. It’s a way of testing their womanhood. By the time they find out that they are in fact fertile, they don’t want to know anymore. But it’s a bit late. They are then faced with the harsh reality that they are going to have a baby or an abortion.
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