Teenage Pregnancy and Sexual Health in The United Kingdom - Comparative Pregnancy Rate

Comparative Pregnancy Rate

The United Kingdom currently has the highest teenage birth rate in Western Europe. It is a long-standing social phenomenon that successive governments have attempted to tackle without major success. The Labour Governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown pledged to halve the number of conceptions to girls under 18 by 2010. In this they were unsuccessful, with only a 13% drop recorded in 2008, a level the then Secretary of State for Children Ed Balls admitted was 'disappointing', although numbers continued to fall over the following two years, with a 9.5% drop in the figures in 2010 despite an overall increase in fertility. Over the last fifty years the proportion of teenagers and in particular those under the age of 16 who have experienced sexual intercourse has increased dramatically. The 2001 survey of sexual attitudes and lifestyles revealed that over 90% of teenagers had experience of sexual intercourse and around a quarter had before the age of 16. Though with the increase in the proportion having intercourse, there has also been an increase in the knowledge and use of contraception, through sex education and the upsurge in family planning clinics.