Condoms - or the lack thereof

Why won't men wear condoms? Schoolgirls come into my clinic one after another seeking prescriptions for the morning-after pill.

When I ask them why they didn't use protection, I get answers like "Well, my boyfriend usually uses it, but this time he forgot."

I always tell them this, "Whether your partner chooses to use a condom is an indication of their sincerity. If a man refuses to use contraception, you can regard them as being insincere and lacking in affection. Guys don't get pregnant, so they don't worry about it. When the crunch comes, they run away."

They reply by saying that they love their boyfriends and they don't want to annoy them by making them wear condoms.

There are girls whose boyfriends won't pay for their abortions, so they use their own money to terminate unwanted pregnancies, but then stay with the same guy after that.

Other girls won't dump a guy even if they know he's cheating on them.

Some girls sell their bodies because their boyfriends have asked them to.

And yet these girls still like these guys. They tell me, "He's really kind. He takes me to work and picks me up when I've finished every day." This is kind?

It's a shock to see how many sad letters I get from these lonely girls. They don't feel happy at home, they're out of place at school and, though they may put on a happy face in front of their friends, below the surface they're hurting.

Typical among the girls contacting me are types who've always excelled at school, taken part in a lot of extracurricular activities and taken on leadership roles amongst their friends.

They've been subjected to the heavy burden of expectation from a young age, have given life their all but then, when they take a close look at themselves, at times they feel that there is nobody else who really understands them.

When a guy comes along who says that he likes them, the lonely and susceptible girls are all too willing to believe him, as well as feel that they've finally found somebody who understands them. So, when one of these guys starts looking for sex, the girls are only too happy to please him. Of course, the guy is presented with a girl who will literally do anything for him, so as well as seeking sex, he'll have few qualms about doing it unprotected if he doesn't have a condom handy.

The Pill is probably the only form of contraception women can take care of entirely by themselves, particularly as far as teenage girls are concerned. I prescribe the Pill to many girls who visit my clinic.

I always instruct them not to tell their boyfriends that they are using the oral contraceptive. The reason I do so is that unless the boyfriend has done a lot of study or thought a lot about what he is doing, he will regard the girl taking the Pill as giving him free reign to have sex without using a cumbersome condom.

While the Pill may be close to 100 percent effective as a contraceptive, it offers no protection against sexually transmitted diseases. With one in four Japanese currently affected by some sort of STD, condom use is absolutely vital. It's hard for many girls to tell their boyfriends to wear condoms.

Guys come up with plenty of excuses not to wear condoms, but none of them are valid.