Sex education and free contraceptives, along with fostering liberal attitudes toward sex, has virtually eliminated teenage pregnancy as a health and social problem in the Netherlands, says Simone Buitendijk of the Dutch Institute for Applied Scientific Research.
Holland has fewer pregnant teenagers than most Western countries.
The Dutch have seen a steady drop in the number of young mothers for decades, even as the teen pregnancy rate has been increasing in other countries. While other countries have been teaching celibacy, the Dutch have accepted that teenagers are sexually active
and have introduced measures to deal with it.
Oral contraceptives are available at pharmacies and free through the National Sick Fund, a state-funded system that ensures that low-income people have medical care. Statistics show that Dutch teenagers are using them.
Buitendijk attributes high contraceptive use by Dutch teenagers to “their sufficient knowledge of reproduction and contraception, the large amount of information available to them both in school and informally, and the general permissive attitude the Dutch
hold toward teen sexuality.”
Source: Teen Pregnancy ‘Virtually Eliminated’ in The Netherlands, Reuters Health, March 2, 2001.
For text (requires Medline subscription) http://www.medscape.com/reuters/prof/2001/03/03.05/20010302publ003.html
For more on Pregnancy/Out of Wedlock Births http://www.ncpa.org/pd/social/social5.html
