It was striking, then, to read in The Tribune the other day (March 1, to be exact) that the Guttmacher Institute ranks Utah 47th among the states in its efforts to help women avoid unwanted pregnancies. You would think that comprehensive sex education in the public schools and strong government efforts to make birth-control services available to women would be a top priority in a state that perennially devotes mountains of time and energy in its Legislature figuring out ways to stop abortions.

You would be wrong.

Silly you, being so rational. Sex is anything but rational. Public policy about sex often isn't very rational, either.

For instance:

"The United States has one of the highest rates of unintended pregnancy in the industrialized world," according to the Guttmacher Institute, which studies such things. Half of unintended pregnancies occur among couples who were using a contraceptive method that failed, either because it did not work properly or the couple did not use it consistently or correctly.

One would think, therefore, that better education about contraceptives would be a public health priority. But Utah's sex education program gets Guttmacher's worst rating, in part because it emphasizes abstinence while tiptoeing around contraception.

Abstinence is fine as far as it goes, but it is only part of the answer. Yet because some misguided morals crusaders insist that if you tell people, especially young people, about contraception, you will encourage sex outside of marriage, Utah policies make frank discussions of contraception in the classroom difficult.

People will have sex regardless of what you tell them. It would be a good idea, then, to teach people how contraception works and make it readily available. Let them use that knowledge, guided by their own moral values.

That would reduce the demand for abortions.