Pregnancy Epidemic

If there are any countries desperate to duplicate our incredibly successful teen-age pregnancy epidemic, here are step-by-step instructions:

1--Encourage men and boys to be sexually active; make it macho to have many female conquests and make it clear that birth control is the girl’s problem.

2--Erase the word responsibility from everyone’s vocabulary.

3--Hang onto the longstanding “fact” that boys need sex, girls need love, so they trade off with each other to get what they want.

4--Give girls and women permission to be sexually active (and even enjoy sex) but only when such activity is spontaneous. If you plan for “it” (as in birth control) then you’re a slut.

5--Have no laws that make men and boys (and the boys’ families) financially accountable for the results of their own sexual activity.

6--Make it OK to “do it,” but not OK to talk about “it,” especially with your sex partners.

7--As far as dispensing sexual information goes--titillate, don’t educate. The media has been totally cooperative on this point.

ANNIE CAROLINE SCHULER

West Hollywood