Contraception - common issues
Contraception issues for young people include:
• A New South Wales study found that 86% of young people in relationships of one year’s duration or less don’t use condoms every time they have sex.
• Over half of those who use the contraceptive pill don’t use condoms to protect themselves from sexually transmissible infections (STIs).
• About 50% of teenagers are sexually active for 12 months before they visit their doctor for prescription contraception.
• Around half of all teenage pregnancies occur within the first six months of becoming sexually active.
• Young people are the most common users of the morning after pill at Australian family planning clinics.
• Statistics from 1998 show that medical abortion is the second most common hospital procedure for Australian women aged between 12 and 24 years.
• According to Medicare records from 1997 to 1999, there were 22 abortions per 1,000 teenagers, which is one of the highest teenage abortion rates in the West, following USA, Hungary, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Canada.