(SF)

MELBOURNE, Fla. -- Opening the airwaves to discussion, a local radio station refuses to shy away from controversy.

This week's entertainment news about the pregnancy of 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears sparked a safe sex giveaway and plenty of discussion, WESH 2 News reported.

Radio Station KISS 95.1 invited everyone to its Melbourne studio to pick up condoms by the handful and by the box, advertised as a way to prevent teen pregnancy.
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"We're still being scared and not being proactive and telling our kids, 'Hey, you know what, I don't want you to have sex, but if you're going to have sex, use a condom," Mike Klein with WBVD radio said.

To many, a condom giveaway doesn’t solve the problem -- it is the problem.

"You're telling teenagers that a condom is your savior," Charles Ford Walker of Apostolic Ministries of America said.

Walker teaches abstinence to teens and said condoms give teenagers an excuse to have premarital sex.

"It takes care of everything, it takes care of you getting pregnant, it takes care of you getting an STD, so go right ahead," Walker said.

At the radio station, Project Response and AIDS prevention and service agency joined in the giveaway.

"Unfortunate fact is that a lot of teenagers are not choosing abstinence so for those kids we need to be talking about other methods of prevention like condom use," April Perkins with Project Response said.

One statistic agreed upon by many is that after several years of remaining steady, the rate of reported teen pregnancy is on the rise.

There was a lot more discussion than there were takers, but radio station executives said discussion is what it was all about.

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