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PR: Report Proves IFPA Strategy A Failure
21.09.2004
Youth Defence today criticised the Crisis Pregnancy Agency for its short sightedness in reviewing the evidence provided by its two studies on sexuality, contraception and unplanned pregnancy. The YD chairman, Eoghan de Faoite, also said that the IFPA’s comments regarding the findings were deliberately dishonest and an attempt to cover up their failed strategy.
The CPA said they had found that “sexually active young Irish adults have a strong tendency for sexual risk taking and poor levels of fertility knowledge” and that these were “significant contributory factors in the scale and seriousness of crisis pregnancy in Ireland.” The CPA went on to claim that 18-25 18 – 25 year olds were less likely to consistently use contraception than other age groups and that drink and drug taking were a factor in that.
While taking into consideration the 5 million euros of taxpayer’s monies being spent by the CPA in producing such reports Youth Defence regret to say that we have heard this all before. The IFPA have spent the past thirty years lecturing the Irish people on contraception and abortion and have used growing rates of teenage pregnancies to justify both explicit sex education in primary schools and application for funding from the Irish Government in order to make contraception more freely available. The reality is that young people in Ireland have sex education and contraceptive information coming out their ears. This strategy has failed in Ireland as it has failed in every other jurisdiction and has lead to more teenage pregnancies, more abortions and an accelerating rate of STIs among 20 - 29 year olds.
Eoghan de Faoite continued “The truth is really quite simple – these rates are climbing because young people have an increasingly casual attitude towards sex and consequences of sexual behaviour. The CPA and the IFPA continue to endorse that in am almost bizarre disregard for the evidence of this strategy failure. In five years time when the CPA has wasted another 25 million euros of our money the situation will no doubt be worse.”
Finally, Youth Defence are aware that the CPA refused funding to the Just the Facts schools program which provides information to students regarding fertility and the development of the child in the womb. They should now be forced to publicly explain that refusal in light of their “serious concern that so many recent school leavers do not know such basic biological facts about human reproduction”.
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