A new study finds that schools with condom distribution programs in the 1990s seem to have actually increased the rate of teenage pregnancies. “We find that access to condoms in schools increases teen fertility by about 10 percent,” the researchers concluded.

According to National Review, the study by two Notre Dame economists fills a gap in research on school contraceptive programs since there was little previous work on condom distribution programs in high schools.

Researchers Kasey Buckles and Daniel Hungerman used 22 school districts in 12 states, districts that began using condom distribution programs in the ‘90s. The study spanned 19 years and studied teen fertility data from 396 high-population counties.

The investigators came to no conclusion about why the condom distribution programs apparently led to higher teen pregnancy rates, but they did suggest that programs without an adequate educational component played an outsized role in the results.

According to National Review, there are several possibilities: condom distributions may have reduced the use of oral contraceptives; there may have been less emphasis on delaying sexual activity, or the distribution programs may have indirectly encouraged an increase in teenage sex.

A Vox.com article on the study suggests that schools did not properly counsel students on how to use condoms effectively. “The results should inform how schools moving forward design condom access programs— and think about the right level of counseling that ought to come with them,” the article states.

National Review noted that the study found such counseling programs did result in lower teen pregnancy rates, but that most of these reductions “fail to offset the increase in teen fertility associated with the condom-distribution program.”

This study arrives shortly following recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggesting that the percentage of sexually active teens is at just over 30 percent, the lowest number since 1991.

Though teen pregnancy and sexual activity have declined overall, this new study suggests that condoms in schools have not contributed to this. The article “Birth Control and Abortion,” at the website Abort73, argues for a different approach:

The way to eliminate these abortions is not by handing out more condoms. It’s by giving people a better understanding of what abortion actually is and does and a better understanding of how unreliable birth control can be.

Buckles and Hungerman’s study on condom distribution warned that policymakers should “use caution in generalizing” the results of the study to “predict the effects of condom distribution programs for today’s teens.” Rather, the study seeks to show that the decline of teen pregnancy in the ’90s was not due to increased condom access through schools.

National Review concluded that the condom distribution study adds “to an impressive body of research which shows that efforts to encourage contraceptive use either through mandates, subsidies or distribution are ineffective at best or counterproductive at worst.”