Teenage Mothers

Overview

This episode explores the cost of teenage mothers to an already stretched health service. With 46,000 pregnant teens registered in the UK last year - the highest number in Europe - and many young people failing to take responsibility for their own health, can the NHS afford to maintain its founding principle of free healthcare at the point of delivery? Part of a three-part series examining the relationship between teenagers and the NHS, this programme visits City Hospital in Birmingham where 10 new pregnant teenage girls register at the maternity unit each week. Is the NHS being asked to pick up the pieces of an increasingly self-destructive society?