The Teenage Birth Control Dilemma and Public Opinion

Between January 1969 and August 1972 4 national Gallup surveys were conducted among white men and women of voting age as a part of a project to collect and analyze public attitudes on population issues. Public support for educational efforts in high school has been relatively high among men over the entire time period but during the past 2 years feminine assent has been increasing with 71% of each sex by August 1972 favoring birth control education in public high schools. The least approval came from less advantaged groups but the differential by educational level in 1972 compared to 1969 has become a minor instead of a major cleavage. Approval for making birth control services available to teenage girls was found in slightly more than 1/2 of the population. Among men approval increased 25% between 1969 and 1972; among women 77%. Among groups where the young are most in need of free birth control services such as the less advantaged approval though increasing is still low. In August 1972 less than 1/3 of white adult Americans regarded premarital relations as permissable. 65% of men and 42% of women under age 30 were permissive toward premarital relations as contrasted to 21% of men and 12% of women aged 45 or over. In effect the increase in approval of birth control services seems more to reflect a rise in permissiveness than pragmatism. There were no significant differences between Catholics and non-Catholics in any area of these surveys.