EC Use in Portugal

Short, but interesting report on emergency contraception use by Portuguese teenagers:

Nearly one-third of sexually active Portuguese girls between the ages of 15 and 19 have taken the "morning-after" pill to prevent pregnancy, according to a study.

The study, one of the largest ever carried out into the contraceptive habits of Portuguese women, also found 16 percent of all sexually active girls in this age group do not use any form of birth control at all, the daily paper Publico said.

Yet fully 83.4 percent of 15-to-19-year-old women said they had received information on contraceptives at school, according to the study by the Portuguese Society of Gynecology.

"We have to pay more attention to young women, this is where the greatest potential risks exist," the president of the association, Daniel Pereira da Silva, told the newspaper.

Staunchly Roman Catholic Portugal has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the European Union.

The study was carried out by the association among 3,858 women between the ages of 15 and 49, the paper said.