Insofar as sex leads to babies, and especially that unprotected sex leads to babies, and that irresponsible and immature people are more likely than others to have unprotected sex, and that the younger you are, the more likely you are to be irresponsible and immature.
Thus a blanket prohibition that says “no sex outside marriage” works a hardship on those responsible, mature people who conscientiously use protection in all their sexual encounters, and are fortunate enough that their contraceptives work consistently. But the prohibition protects those who are not responsible enough to use contraceptives, or who are unlucky. More the first group than the second, if for no other reason than that they outnumber the responsible by hundreds to one, in my estimation.
Educating them on how to use contraception effectively and making it easily available would protect them just as well, if not better. Irresponsible people aren’t going to let cultural taboos get in the way of their natural urges.
Because following instructions about contraception still lets them get laid. I don’t think you can assume that, just because someone is likely to ignore one form of advice about sex, that they’ll ignore all advice about sex. If the alternative presented to irresponsible behavior is not especially onerous, it seems logical to assume that more people are going to behave responsibly. “Don’t ever have sex until you’re married,” is far too onerous for a lot of people. “Wear a rubber,” is much less so.
But they are irresponsible. They are not being stopped from sex by fear of consequences, and therefore changing the strictures about contraception does not address a problem for them.
They aren’t being stopped from sex because they want to have sex, thanks to millions of years of natural selection eliminating the individuals who lack that drive. “Don’t have sex until you’re married” is advice that would get in the way of that drive, so they’ll have a hard time following it. “Wear a rubber” would not.
This doesn’t square with anecdotal observation. random link from google
American teenegers get pregnant at a similar rate to those from such modern countries as Belarus, Bulgaria, Romania, and the Russian Federation. Sweden runs a rate approximately one-fourth that of the US, despite a fractionally higher level of teenage sex. Other developed countries range in between.
I think this is probably not unrelated to the US having schizoprenic streak of sex-obsessed sheet-sniffing puritanism a mile wide, while the Swedes long ago cottoned on to the fact that everyone is naked underneath their clothes.
I suspect if you graph acceptance of nudity (and by implication sex) versus reproductive health, you’d find an interesting relationship.
Which on closer inspection turns out to be from a sex education advocacy group :smack:
Nonetheless, the data seems reasonably sensible, and here are another couple of links: guardian op-ed and save the children from the latter, I found this particularly striking
Given that those are the areas I would expect to be most conservative and most apt to deny that teenagers will do what teenagers have always done, I am not surprised.
The problem with relying on taboos to regulate behavior is that they are socially based, which means they are only effective if society at large knows what I’m up to. The threat of being a social outcast for getting my groove on with someone I’m not supposed to is meaningless if I take steps to make sure no one ever finds out. Biology, on the other hand, doesn’t need witnesses to work. I might be willing to violate a taboo because I feel I’m smart enough to “outwit” convention, but I’ll also know that I can’t outwit a virus, and I’ll take steps to protect myself. Yeah, obviously, there are still plenty of people who aren’t smart enough to realize they can’t out smart a virus or a particularly energetic sperm, and there’s not much you can do for them except arrange a nice funeral or set up some good daycare centers and hope their kids turn out smarter. But I think there are enough of the former group to not just write them off entirely by relying on social pressure to “protect” them.