Abortion and pregnancy counseling ads will be allowed on British television for the first time, under new rules proposed by advertising regulators. Firms will also be allowed to advertise condoms before 9 p.m. as part of a shakeup of Britain’s rules on advertising.

The proposals are designed to halt Britain’s soaring teenage pregnancy rate—the highest in Europe. The Advertising Standards Authority is currently conducting a 12-week consultation period before the proposals are implemented.

These ads would not be allowed to run during programs aimed at children age 10 or under. Nevertheless, the new rules would give the UK one of the most liberal advertising policies on sexual health in the world.

With the high rates of sexually transmitted disease, teenage pregnancy and teenage abortion in Britain, even the government can see there is a problem. But will the ads fix it?

Daily Mail columnist Amanda Patel writes:

These adverts, financed and produced by firms with a vested interest in selling condoms and promoting abortion as a lifestyle choice, will be slick, sophisticated and deliberately misleading.Condom adverts, doubtless timed to accompany favorite teenage tv programs like Hollyoaks or Skins—themselves obsessed with portraying teenage sex—will inevitably show sex as being fun, exciting and cool. …As for abortion clinic adverts, you just know they will feature glossy shots of cheerful nurses, smiling patients and gleaming clinics, with no hint of the immense physical and emotional consequences.Far from curbing teen pregnancies, treating condoms like Twix bars and abortion clinics like spa breaks will only promote greater sexual activity among teenage girls, with the reassurance that terminating a pregnancy is just another lifestyle choice.

This kind of change to advertising rules will only make the problem worse, not better. It will give teens the message that premarital sex is normal and natural, and that abstinence until marriage is weird. As another Daily Mail columnist, Peter Hitchens, wrote, Britain’s policy on contraception turns sex “into a casual, often impersonal recreation, rather less serious than tennis.”

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