"I was young and I didn't realize the cause and effect," Gutter, now 19, said. Her son Elijah is 19 months old. This is her life now, taking care of the child she loves, but one she wishes she had waited to have.

Gutter is just the kind of teenager the City of Hamilton is targeting with its new campaign on Sexual Health. Called "I'm Worth the Wait," the campaign is encouraging parents and teenagers to talk to each other. It asks that youths hold off on having sex. In 11 bus shelters and on 10 buses around the city, (posters of) a blonde girl with a snowboard and a guy with curly hair will be promoting a message of abstinence throughout July.

"Move too fast and it won't last," cheers the poster with the girl; while the boy proclaims, "I have questions."

The campaign was first launched last fall with a series of information booklets sent home to parents of grades 5 to 8 students in the City's Public and Catholic schools. But with the summer months in swing and more teenagers out and about, the City decided to take its message to the streets.It's a new approach for Hamilton, looking for ways to combat increasing rates of teen pregnancy and sexually-transmitted disease.

In 1992, the Hamilton rate was 44 pregnancies per 1,000 teens, below the then- provincial average of 46 per 1,000. In 1997, the most recent year for which statistics are available, it was 52.9 per 1,000 teens. The provincial average was 44 per 1,000 that year.

The numbers are outdated to be sure, but Teresa Hartnett, chair of the Sexual Health Network, said new numbers aren't expected to be lower. "We know that they are (having sex) and we know that most people think they shouldn't be," she said.

Hartnett said the rate of sexually-transmitted disease is also increasing, particularly Chlamydia -- which in 1998 was 1,134 cases per 100,000 females aged 15-24. Those numbers were taken from statistics released in 2001 by the Planned Parenthood Society of Hamilton. Health officials decided in 1988 that they needed to tackle the issue. I'm Worth the Wait is part of that plan.

Targeting teens 18 and under, it tries to combat the pressures Hartnett said teens face from peers and the media to have sex. "There is an underlying message out there," she said. "They're not seeing the side of reality." But promoting abstinence to teens who are dealing with their changing bodies and sexual awareness is a tricky proposition, Hartnett said.

Gutter said she would have appreciated getting the abstinence message as a student. But she's not sure it would have gotten through. "I didn't really care what anyone said. I just did what I wanted to do," she said. "(But) I would have thought about it more."

Hartnett, a teacher at St. Francis Xavier Catholic school in Stoney Creek, said the campaign isn't about religion. It's about making informed choices about when you have sex.

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