To Irishwomen of a certain age who remember with a shudder when male politicians, pharmacists and gynaecologists upheld Catholic orthodoxy better than any cardinal, turning sex into a terrifying Russian roulette, the statistics highlighted by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency make mystifying reading, writes Kathy Sheridan.
In a new century, when condoms line up with cough sweets in every chemist's shop, when the pill is as plentiful as Smarties and the morning after pill provides doomsday insurance, we are reminded that just half of all sexually-active women use contraception. Worse, only a quarter of sexually active men do.
Much of the commentary has focused on sex education in schools, on the price of contraception and its accessibility. Yet the women in the age group most likely to be seeking abortions - 20 to 24-year-olds - are well past school age, are likely to be studying and/or working, and should by now have a handle on the price and accessibility part.
After all, a month's supply of the average pill prescription from the Family Planning Association is available for about the price of a Smirnoff Ice. A dozen condoms can be had for as little as €6.95. Yet, only about one in four women seeking abortions said they normally used contraception. On the face of it, this is madness.
Has anything changed in 30 or 40 years? Ask a 22-year-old woman if she carries a condom in her purse (a question that seemed daring when Germaine Greer was a child) and she will look as askance as any convent boarder of the 1960s: "That would look like you're planning to have sex,"said one. "Boys call girls like that sluts."
Ask a young man if he carries condoms, and chances are he will assume a pained expression, one that when teased out, translates as "I hate them. You can't feel anything." But the key point is that as long as the girl is not protesting madly, he will proceed without one. "I'd wait for her to kick up and if she didn't. I'd assume we're okay."
The assumption of course, is that if she says nothing, she is on the pill. This strategy seems to apply whether the girl is drunk or sober.
And she may well have been on the pill, possibly to regulate periods rather than to facilitate sex. But - as another young girl put it - what with her weight gain, mood swings, tender breasts, headaches, the possibility of blood clots and loss of libido, she may also have chucked it down the loo or decided to give her body "a break".
As for the morning-after pill, girls still find it embarrassing to discuss sex matters with the local doctor. The Family Planning clinic may not be accessible. To consult a doctor costs anything up to €50, a sizeable amount for a cash-strapped student to find in a hurry, especially one who has always balked at discussing sex with parents. Then the country town chemist may be closed because it's Sunday.
Meanwhile, as she struggles to get money and appointments in train, last night's sex partner is probably back in his bed, secure in the age-old presumption that "it's her job to sort it". It's the way it's always been...
This scenario is hardly rare. A study carried out among 18 to 21-year-olds, third level students in the midlands, a few years ago (Duggan - 2000) showed that over half had had a pregnancy "scare" and 11 per cent had sought advice on pregnancy options.
So that's the big change in 30 or 40 years; not that feckless teenagers are producing babies by the gross (they're not; the number of births to teenagers has remained relatively stable over 30 years) but that many more people are having unprotected sex and are about three times more likely to have abortions.
Thirty or 40 years ago, it was the duty of girls, we were told, to keep boys' explosive sexuality under control; boys couldn't possibly be expected to control themselves. It was a given that women had no control issues of their own and anyway, it was women who would carry the baby and the stigma.
Then came the pill, with the promise of liberating women from the terror and old double standards.
And it did, up to a point. But it also conveyed the message that women were sex dolls, permanently in heat, available 24/7, without any price tag.
Now men hardly pause to ask. Sex without responsibility is assumed. Drunken, silly, needy girls play along, while thinking women of every age wonder what happened to that bright new dawn.
The response to the new male contraceptive (safe, no side effects, no pregnancies) proves that the old double standard lives. To a man, they recoil fastidiously from the notion of injections, of hormones, of anything that might threaten their libido or masculinity. Research into male attitudes towards contraception is remarkably scarce. Odd, isn't it?