Steps towards a situational ethic
Hollingworth, P.J.
Australian Family Physician 7: 6-11
1978
ISSN/ISBN: 0300-8495 PMID: 11662881 Document Number: 127968
The Australian Royal Commission on Human Relationships summarized the problems of adolescents and family planning by declaring there is a level of teenage sexual activity that cannot be ignored. Young single people have a low rate of effective contraception. Teenagers suffer a very high proportion of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Placing the ethical questions in a contemporary social context enables society to face the issues in a practical, realistic fashion. Historically preserved traditions, like the taboo against premarital sex, are and will continue to be important in the bonding of families, individuals, and societies. A situational ethic applies to changes in the social fabric and addresses them. Society has changed from rural to urban, from agrarian to technological, from literacy to mass media, from superstitious knowledge of reproduction to scientific methods of birth control. The realities of change should be faced with a sense of ethics that is grounded in tradition and adjusted to the needs of the actual situation which is that too many teenagers have too many unwanted pregnancies. They can be helped.