Topic: Pregnancy News - Pregnancy targets ‘to be missed’ (BBC News)

Teenage pregnancy rates in the UK are the highest in Western Europe Ministers are to step up efforts to reduce teenage pregnancy rates after a report found the government was set to miss a target to halve them by 2010. The Family Education Trust charity told the Sunday Telegraph the report showed the government’s strategy was failing. While rates of pregnancy among under-18s are at their lowest for two decades, the total number is up because of a rising teenage population. Figures are the highest in Western Europe - twice as high as in Germany, three times as high as in France and six times as high as in the Netherlands. Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust, told the Sunday Telegraph that the government had allowed the “systematic removal of every restraint that used to act as a disincentive to under-age sex”. The Department for Children, Schools and Families - jointly responsible for the target with the Department of Health - said efforts would be “redoubled” in a bid to meet the “stretching” target. read more

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