You know, aside from the fact that that was just a piss-poor episode of Smallville - which isn't exactly a beacon of consistent quality to begin with - what really lights my head on fire is that, as you point out, even when the characters were all set to do the nasty there wasn't so much as a peep about contraception. How does that help the fight against teen pregnancy?!
My first guess was that this approach - all abstinence, no contraception - might be an ideological mandate handed down by the planners of this whole teen pregnancy campaign, but on further research it doesn't look like it. The focus of the www.teenpregnancy.org site is mainly on delaying the age at which teenagers become sexually active, and the accompanying PDF documents make the points that kids who start early are less likely to use contraception, and that programs that address both abstinence and contraception are highly effective not just at reducing teen pregnancy, but also at putting off the start of sexual activity (thus overriding the puritan objection that talking about safe sex will only encourage the little bastards).
In other words, wherever the Smallville writers are getting this apparent anti-contraception bias, it's not from the teen pregnancy campaign they're supposedly supporting. I think we have to put the blame for this one squarely on the writers, which as you note gives us a whole other perspective on the infamous "Seeing Red." Personally, I'm taking DeKnight off the Christmas card list this year...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 08:43 pm (UTC)My first guess was that this approach - all abstinence, no contraception - might be an ideological mandate handed down by the planners of this whole teen pregnancy campaign, but on further research it doesn't look like it. The focus of the www.teenpregnancy.org site is mainly on delaying the age at which teenagers become sexually active, and the accompanying PDF documents make the points that kids who start early are less likely to use contraception, and that programs that address both abstinence and contraception are highly effective not just at reducing teen pregnancy, but also at putting off the start of sexual activity (thus overriding the puritan objection that talking about safe sex will only encourage the little bastards).
In other words, wherever the Smallville writers are getting this apparent anti-contraception bias, it's not from the teen pregnancy campaign they're supposedly supporting. I think we have to put the blame for this one squarely on the writers, which as you note gives us a whole other perspective on the infamous "Seeing Red." Personally, I'm taking DeKnight off the Christmas card list this year...