CLAYGATE, ENGLAND – Lisa High's story is a classic salutary tale of adolescent sex. After getting her pregnant at 17, her boyfriend got cold feet. She thought briefly of abortion, but couldn't go through with it. Now Lisa is 21, a single mom living in South London - but she is hardly unique. Every year, 40,000 British girls under 18 become pregnant, a promiscuity "epidemic" that gives Britain by far the highest rate of teenage mothers in Western Europe. Figures like these have persuaded an American group espousing total chastity to bring its missionary zeal to Britain's teenagers.
The Silver Ring Thing, which claims to have won over 22,000 young Americans to the virtues of abstinence, is bringing more than two dozen of its converts to spread the word through a series of glitzy media events starting Friday in this town south of London. Yet the Silver Ring Thing tour is proving controversial before it has even started.
Early press coverage has been snippy at best, hostile at worst. Cultural commentators have scoffed that outreach based on American Christian-based values, supported by $700,000 in US federal funds, will not necessarily transplant easily in a society that has become defiantly secular.
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Since the 1960s, when the sexual revolution threw off the last vestiges of Victorian values,the British approach has started from the position that many children will experiment with sex. Information is therefore crucial, and efforts have concentrated on sex education in schools, informing children about contraception, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), risk reduction, and family planning. Yet statistics show the approach has yet to turn the tide. Teen pregnancy rates in Britain remain five times as high as some parts of Europe such as the Netherlands and Sweden - though still much lower than in the United States.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0623/p01s03-woeu.html