The student mutual insurance company published a press release on contraception. Its moralizing tone makes young women feel guilty who resort to abortion or the morning-after pill.
Here is an advertisement which SMEREP would have gone well. On the occasion of World Contraception Day, September 26, the student mutual society has split a traditional communicated which relays data from its latest surveys on the health of its members. But this time, the document is coupled with an insidious moralizing discourse. Family planning was quick to react on social networks, and sent SMEREP to its forum published in Release. She calls for an end to moralizing on the sexuality of young people. On social networks, the bad buzz is swelling.
Dubious formulations
It must be said that the press release starts badly: the student mutual insurance company “sounds the alarm bells about the risky behavior of young women who too often use emergency contraception or even abortion”. A clumsy formulation at best, guilt-ridden at worst. Communication errors then accumulate: the figures are aligned without any analysis. Thus, the document underlines that “70% of French students do not systematically use the condom” … forgetting in passing that other means of contraception exist (pill, implants, IUDs …) but above all that men are also in charge. contraception.
Throughout the text, questionable formulations are linked. Addressing emergency contraception, the SMEREP recalls that “nearly 10% (of the students) used it 3 times and 3% more than 5 times”. A sentence punctuated by an unusual exclamation mark. Here again, any explanation is omitted, while the reasons are numerous: forgetting a pill, condom that cracks… The press release continues its diatribe by attacking high school girls, in whom “the results are also alarming”.
It did not take more to arouse the anger of the tweetos, which highlight a moralizing and guilty campaign against young women.
Hey there @LaSMEREP that’s not how we do prevention! judgmental and judgmental approach https://t.co/lAojzzyABo
– Avispa J (@AvispaJfrom) September 14, 2016
Your press comm reeks of blaming young people on emergency contraception with a gross figure that makes no sense. @LaSMEREP
– HygieSuperBowl (@HygieSuperBowl) September 13, 2016
???? What is this blaming SMEREP com? !!
Contraception concerns both M and F!
?? https://t.co/ZLXKveAF4y– FeministsVsCyberH (@VsCyberH) September 14, 2016
Exaggerated data
The anger is all the more justified since the figures put forward come from a survey conducted on small numbers of people who are not very representative of the rest of the population: Opinion Way approached 1,214 students – including 700 Ile-de-France residents – and 771 high school students – including 368 Ile-de-France residents. . By looking at national data, it is therefore easy to find very different results on the use of abortion.
A tiny minority of French women do not use any contraception. The proportion of the population affected by the voluntary termination of pregnancy is also marginal. For SMEREP, 5 to 6% of high school students have used it. The latest data communicated by the DREES are quite different: among 15-17 year olds, it is almost 10 times less.
Emergency contraception is freely available in pharmacies. The data are therefore rarer, but those of the 2010 health barometer agree with those of the SMEREP.
With this poorly organized press release, SMEREP offers a lesson in failed communication, including on social networks where it has not reacted, despite the many calls from tweetos.
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