Obsessed with teen sex

Or, to offer an alternative headline, suggested by a journalist mate of mine: “Manufactured news, only on ‘e’!”

The junk-stat-of-the-week comes from a news report last night on e-tv, the only private free-to-air TV station in South Africa. It begins ominously: “Abortion clinics are being flooded with requests to have pregnancies terminated.”

Look, I know teen sex sells. That’s one reason for the provocative headline on this post. But let’s follow this news story a little more closely. According to the report, Marie Stopes Clinics carried out 24 223 abortions last year. “Many were done on teenagers, some even younger,” says the newsreader, dramatically.

Cut to footage of schoolgirls, with the camera focusing on somewhat podgy waists that may indicate pregnancy, and faces chastely omitted. “Still at school, still teenagers, and pregnant,” says the voice-over. “It’s girls like these who are queueing at clinics around the country for abortions.”

The law in South Africa permits girls as young as 12 to obtain abortions without parental consent, and “it is a right many youngsters are exercising,” the voice-over says, before turning to Jack Strachen of Marie Stopes Clinics, who talks of a “degenration of morality” and says “girls are becoming more sexually active”.

Nevermind the fact that presumably, the same goes for boys, unless there has been some alarming advance in radical feminism of which I’m not aware. Let’s cut to the facts. Of the 24 223 aborted pregnancies last year, which the report incorrectly says amounts to 2 500 per month (the correct figure is 2 019), “about 100 [per month] were girls under the age of 18”. Now I don’t know if 24 000 abortions by Marie Stopes is a lot. It sounds low, given South Africa’s population of near 50 million, but then, Marie Stopes may serve only a fraction of the market.

The relative share of teenagers, however, is the key here. Let’s work that out. If the report were accurate, 4% of the abortions involved teenage pregnancies. In fact, it’s 5%. Is that really such a serious matter? Sure, for the 5% in question, although it bears mentioning that the legal age of consent in South Africa is 16, not 18, and I’d wager the majority of the stats are in the 16 to 17 age group. Either way, these numbers don’t compare badly with teenage abortion rates in Britain, for example, where estimates suggest one in 50 girls aged 13 to 15 get pregnant, and half seek abortions. Assuming, given the South African data, no girls under 12 had abortions (which is a generous assumption in the context of the following mock calculation), if women over 18 were to have abortions at the same rate as those under 18, they’d be having abortions to the ripe old Or, to offer an alternative headline, suggested by a journalist mate of mine: “Manufactured news, only on ‘e’!”

The junk-stat-of-the-week comes from a news report last night on e.tv, the only private free-to-air TV station in South Africa. It begins ominously: “Abortion clinics are being flooded with requests to have pregnancies terminated.”

The law in South Africa permits girls as young as 12 to obtain abortions without parental consent, and “it is a right many youngsters are exercising”, the voice-over says, before turning to Jack Strachen of Marie Stopes Clinics, who talks of a “degeneration of morality” and says “girls are becoming more sexually active”.

Nevermind the fact that, presumably, the same goes for boys, unless there has been some alarming advance in radical feminism of which I’m not aware. Let’s cut to the facts. Of the 24 223 aborted pregnancies last year, which the report incorrectly says amounts to 2 500 per month (the correct figure is 2 019), “about 100 [per month] were girls under the age of 18”. Now I don’t know if 24 000 abortions by Marie Stopes is a lot. It sounds low, given South Africa’s population of near 50-million, but then, Marie Stopes may serve only a fraction of the market.

Either way, these numbers don’t compare badly with teenage abortion rates in Britain, for example, where estimates suggest one in 50 girls aged 13 to 15 get pregnant, and half seek abortions. Assuming, given the South African data, no girls under 12 had abortions (which is a generous assumption in the context of the following mock calculation), if women over 18 were to have abortions at the same rate as those under 18, they’d be having abortions to the ripe old age of 132.

In short, teenage pregnancies are an issue, of course, but the Marie Stopes data, which was intended to highlight the post-holiday rush (anyone surprised?), doesn’t suggest a new crisis in teenage abortion rates.

Why is such alarmist reporting an issue? Because sensationalism on the part of the news media, which should know better, leads to idiotic laws such as the new Sexual Offences Act, which appears to outlaw touching and kissing among teens. Witness this quotation yesterday, attributed to Margaret Arnolds, a spokesperson for the National Democratic Convention, a Christian-based political party:

We cannot allow our young people to be sexually irresponsible. It seems as if our youngsters do not have anything else to do but be active sexually. The clinic has released statistics that prove after every holiday there is an influx of teenagers wanting abortions.

We have laws that are supposed to protect our youth, but it seems they have given them the go-ahead to be reckless with sex, as they can get rid of babies and just start again next holiday.

We ask lawmakers in the country: What type of leaders are we raising and what morals we are teaching?

To quote US writer and thinker Thomas Sowell somewhat out of context: “When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, ‘There ought to be a law,’ you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap.”

(First published on my own blog.)