I must confess to being a little perplexed to read this morning that the 9pm watershed ban on TV condom adverting may be abolished in the interests of better sex ed.

I understand why manufacturers advertise goods and services on TV — it's in order to sell more products. But I had no idea that Britain's depressingly high teenage pregnancy rates were caused by poor sales of condoms. Come to think of it, have you ever seen a condom advert on TV? Am I watching the wrong channels? Too much David Attenborough, that must be it.

Abortion charities – pregnancy advisory services, as they are often called – will also be able to advertise provided they make clear their position on abortion (is it an option?), according to proposals from the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice.

All this comes as a result of an initiative from a body called the independent advisory committee on sexual health and HIV, chaired by Labour apparatchik, Lady (Joyce) Gould, who will not see 75 again. The product is associated with "healthy and active lifestyles," she wrote in a letter which conjures up an image of hill-walking.

Anyway, the committee's proposal was the cue for familiar British comedy routines where sex is the issue. Committee types talked solemnly about making sure the ads are not seen by children under 10 (honest, that's what they're saying) while militant Christian groups wrung their hands in horror.

Among the routinely excited usual suspects is the Daily Mail, which accidentally illustrates the problem in today's edition. On page 27 it prints a photo of a naked Italian woman politician called Mara Carfagna to illustrate a lustful, if chauvinistic, article. She would be very beautiful but for that fact that she has been hideously mutilated: Ms Carfagna's left nipple has been removed, whether by a fellow-Italian (brutal Mafiosi perhaps?) or by the Daily Mail's art department is not clear.

This is the Mail's version of sex ed: take your kit off and nasty things happen. As such, it may be very effective as a deterrent to those tempted to become Italian ministers under Silvio Berlusconi, whose women ministers are famously glamorous.

This is the lesson of TV advertising. If you want to stop people smoking or drinking too much, driving too fast near schools and other antisocial activities you frighten them by showing what their lungs or liver will look like – or shame them about how it feels to kill someone.

My hunch is that the pre-watershed ads for condoms will not take this line. Far from it, the point will be to promote condom use on health as well as pregnancy grounds.

Indeed, today's Times article on the subject carries a "Welcome to Pleasureland" condom ad which features a young person in black undies. She does not seem to have gonorrhoea, chlamydia, syphilis, herpes (not to mention genital warts) which the authorities are rightly keen to stop spreading among the under-16s.

The underlying assumption here is that our young people are all going to be at it like rabbits, so why not accept the fact and try to direct them towards the condom machine. Is that not a counsel of despair? I realise that most young people are interested in sex, having been a young person myself in the later Jurassic period. They are interested in many things, sex being just one of them.

But do we have to encourage them in what is an already over-sexualised society? At the risk of sounding like the current pope (who knows as much about these matters as I know about football) I beg to doubt it.

I know that many good people do excellent work on sexual education and that it's a fine line between promoting ignorance and active connivance (as a parent, I have trod that line). But I am encouraged in my scepticism by a routine email this morning.

It comes from Graham Allen, Labour MP for Nottingham North and a member of the Commons awkward squad, whose website can be found here. Allen's constituency, so he says, "has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in western Europe".

Along with local authorities and other agencies, including fellow MPs, Allen has been working for years to turn his city around in a series of initiatives. Teen pregnancy rates are falling at last. By coincidence, he staged a Commons adjournment debate on this very subject last night where condom education has its place among other measures.

"Teenage pregnancy doesn't stand alone. It is just one of a number of symptoms, including drug and drink misuse, low educational aspiration, low work aspirations, low self-esteem and many other specifics. All of theses stem from one root cause which One Nottingham's early intervention strategy is seeking to address, that is to create much stronger social and emotional bedrock in the babies, children and young people of the city. Capable, rounded individuals, well parented, will lead to a dramatic reduction in the symptoms we see around us. Our pioneering circle of early intervention from 0-18 is now well developed. It isn't rocket science – just solid help when it is needed – good parents, great kids, better citizens," the MP said.

Good stuff, and minister Beverley Hughes's reply included a bit about encouraging the young to "delay sexual activity until they really understand it and are ready".

OK, I realise that might disqualify most of us. Sexual emancipation is better than sexual repression but there's a downside, as there usually is. If you don't believe me, try Googling that rape case under way at Winchester crown court. It involves educated people, at least six bottles of wine and – at best – a lot of misunderstanding.