Birth control pills should be available as soon as it's medically safe (relative to all the other risks in our lives) to do so.

Sex education is extremely important. I've known too many people (often from a strong religious background) who believed things like "You can't get pregnant if you don't kiss" or "It won't happen the first time" or "He can just pull out and it's safe". etc. We would like to be a rational society so let's act like it and educate our children - without euphemism, without bias.

I think young men AND women should also be encouraged to buy condoms. I hear a lot about the pill or abstinence. If someone is planning on having sex, they should go out and buy condoms and insist on using them.

All options in birth control should be available to all women of childbearing age, whether younger or older. Preferably very young girls have parents who will educate them about options and emphasize the importance of using barrier methods and possibly other methods every single time, should they choose to have sex. Not having birth control seems far more likely to promote unsafe sex and unwanted pregnancy more than promoting sex itself.

Let's be realistic: adolescents are pretty much ambulatory hormone factories and debating what "promotes" sex is just silly. They are biologically sexual creatures at an age when judgment and reasoning is not yet sat an adult level, so we need to educate them how to deal with it instead of worrying about their level of interest.

Of course abstinence is the only 100% foolproof method but only as long as it is total and continued. It's simply not realistic to believe it is the solution for all young people. If we were not so prudish, we might teach non-intercourse forms of sexual activity that have no pregnancy risk and also be supportive of masturbation, which is also pretty darn safe.

The problem is getting through to those fixated on sex as something shameful or dirty.