Who says Chinese entrepreneurs have no flair for innovative and creative ideas? Imagine domestic services firms providing post-abortion care to college girls desperate to end unwanted pregnancies. That is exactly what is happening in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province.

A college junior surnamed Li recently gave a first-hand account of the "confined recovery" service. She underwent an abortion in April and was drawn to the service after seeing advertising posters plastered outside her campus.

Her "confinement" apartment was in a housing estate close to the campus, a place that offered her peace and privacy, Xinhua quoted her as saying. Her boyfriend could stay with her during her week-long recuperation, reading books, watching TV and enjoying music. She was served five meals a day to replenish what the service providers said was her life force and strength, depleted as a result of the abortion. They paid 150 yuan (US$18) a day, a sum Li and her boyfriend thought was expensive but well spent.

Li is just one of hundreds of college students in Nanjing who have used or may consider using the service. A random survey of eight institutions of higher learning, conducted in March by the city's Maternity and Child Care Institute, shows that an average of 3.64 per cent of female college students had an abortion, with the figure being as high as 7 per cent at some colleges.

No similar data is available on a national level. But if we apply Nanjing's average of 3.64 per cent to the country's around 9 million female college students, it would unfortunately mean more than 250,000 may be having abortions every year.

Many parents and education authorities, distraught at this state of affairs, want the campus sex ban reinstated, even though they know it is unworkable. In fact, it has never worked, not even during the most sexually repressed years when they were in college.

For the new generation of college students, raised in an abundance of nutrition and in a more liberalized social environment, a mixture of hormones and social cues makes sex harder still to resist.

College students, well beyond the age of consent, are the masters of their own bodies and minds. Whether we like it or not, we may never be able to stop unwanted pregnancies on campus. But we certainly can help reduce the number of abortions by educating young people about safe sex.

In spite of their high school sex education, college students never know enough about sex just how the body works.

Sex education in college needs to go a step further, focusing, explicitly if possible, on safe sex and on the psychological, emotional and physical impacts that unprotected sex can have on the young adults.

To start with, they need to be shaken out of their belief in modern myths: that they have to have a boyfriend or girlfriend to acquire a status on the campus; that girls have to give up their bodies to their boyfriends as a token of commitment; and that AIDS and venereal diseases do not invade campuses.

They also need to know that sex isn't just about opening their bodies to each other. It's about a relationship, an intimate interaction involving both their body and soul.

Sex education eventually comes down to the naked truth of birth control. Tell our young adults that the most effective method of contraception is to always use a condom, preferably along with spermicide. Any other precautionary measures such as the withdrawal or menstrual cycle methods don't work. The only 100 per cent foolproof way of contraception is abstinence.

A post-abortion nursing service might be an innovative and helpful idea. But we wish to see that business wither and the business of sex education prosper.

Email: zouhr@chinadaily.com.hk

(China Daily 06/23/2006 page4)