IN your opinion column (We Say, Wednesday, May 26) you made the ludicrous statement that nobody knows why the level of teenagers having sex and falling pregnant continues to rise.

You then go on to offer full support to the Teenage Pregnancy and Parenting Strategy in Worcestershire Secondary Schools. You even have the effrontery to patronise your readers by stating it is preferable that parents should be involved, but it is up to the individuals concerned.

How shameful that you didn't consider how young some of these children are.

This is about young teenagers and many who have not yet reached teen age. You wonder why such things happen when, for more than 20 years, do-gooders, local authorities and the Government have spurned the very concept of marriage and family and decided to tell children that life is for living and that sex is all right so long as you explain about precautions.

The "authorities" have then done their job. In this politically correct world we have the sickness of the hidden neglect of our young. Never, it appears, do we tell our youngsters how important the word "no" is and that self-respect is a vitally important word in their vocabulary and lifestyle.

Once again, it is equal opportunities for both sexes, however young, forgetting that there is no equality in a very young girl expecting a child.

To curb this problem, the latest answer is to let the youngster pop into school for a morning- after-pill. It is this unforgivably cruel, uncaring attitude that causes pregnancy rates and sexually transmitted diseases to rise.

We should be horrified by the escalating rates of pregnancy and disease, yet the Evening News states it doesn't know why it happens?

In simple terms, it happens because we have discarded all responsibility for our young people. We promise them a false freedom of self-expression, self-indulgence and self-gratification and the rewards are all too evident.

Until we have a government that genuinely cares for the young, and rids itself of the multitude of do-gooders and politically correct meddlers who demand freedom for everyone and everything, then the problem will continue.

I fear for our children.

P CAFFREY, Worcester.