Policing public morality in the West

The United States can be described by many superlatives, one more was recently discovered: The US has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies among western countries, researched by a UNICEF study called “A League Table of Teenage Births in Rich Nations”. Considering the policy of the conservative government it is really striking that President Bush, supported by the Moral Majority, is pushing forward “abstinence only” programs, spending $170 Million a year on this “say no” doctrine and avoiding any kind of teenage sexuality education, according to figures provided in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 9th March 2005. Under the circumstances of this extremely high rate of pregnant teenagers one may raise the question, if law and strictly enforced “abstinence only” programs are enough to prevent young women from pregnancy and if in fact these programs are effective in any way.

While America is facing the problem of teenage pregnancy, the Labor Government in England has to deal with a high number of binge drinkers, who are said to cost the country 20 billion pounds a year. Many of them are teenagers who start drinking alcohol when they are 12 years old. It appears that policies and laws do not have any impact on these youngsters at all and there seems to be a lack of educating the children both within the family and at schools. In order to fight against teenage drinkers, the Prime Ministers Strategy Unit has developed a plan called “Alcohol harm reduction strategy for England”. Predominantly the government’s strategy puts the focus on preventive work by informing teenagers about alcohol risks. Moreover, since March 16th of this year a code of practice for TV advertising has been put in place to ensure that commercials do not target young (potential) drinkers.

In 2004, two years after Blair initiated the Alcohol harm reduction strategy, a survey shows that the majority of teenagers would prefer shopping rather than drinking. This is possibly an indication that focusing on preventive methods to combat alcoholism was more successful than an implementation of tougher punishment and more severe laws would have been.

This brings us to the question of how useful are strictly enforced “abstinence only” programs? Maybe its defenders do harm to teenagers, by misleading them about sexuality education, rather than having any positive impact. Since strict laws and tough punishment do not always appear to be useful, the question which arises from all this, is which other factors can help encourage public morality, not only in the States and England but also in any other country. Moreover we should ask, if and to which extent laws can shape people’s behavior in general. Laws are more adjuvant when the basic living conditions, created by the state, such as social welfare and justice are sufficient and when the executive organs, such as police and military are bonded to the laws and sanctions just like any ordinary citizen.

Social background factors, such as familiar context, peer pressure, religious and economic reasons might as well have an impact on people and might cause social ills. If you have broken home conditions, and no one to trust within your family, the risk to become a binge drinker or a criminal is at an increased level and no law will stop you from drinking or engaging in other crimes. The “say no” programs that tries to stop teenagers from sexual intercourse without explaining the reasoning, may have the opposite effect as teenagers see it as a challenge and a border to be crossed. So the approach should rather be to give children a good education, at home and in schools, and to teach them how to become a strong personality. No law can do that.

** Esther Fernholz is an intern working with the Malaysia team of the East and South East Asia office of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.