MY FIRST reaction was outrage.

And over the next two days that’s pretty much where my mood barometer stayed put.

In fact, no matter how many times I re-read the story, I just kept feeling that same tightening of neck muscles, that same impulse to clench my fists, those same spasms in my colon.

So why did I keep revisiting the scene of this crime when all it caused me was pain?

Well, because I was worried I had become Net Curtained, Daily Mail-erized and Mary Whitehouse’d.

The trigger for this angst was the gloriously incensing ‘schoolgirl-texts-for-morning-after-pill’ story that broke this week, and for those of you unfamiliar with it, here’s a summary: From July, girls as young as 11 at four secondary schools in Oxford and two in Banbury will be able to text requests for the pill if they have had unprotected sex, or believe contraception has failed.

The service is being introduced jointly by Oxfordshire County Council and Oxfordshire NHS Primary Care Trust after a jump of almost 10 per cent in the number of girls aged 18 and under getting pregnant.

County councillor Louise Chapman, cabinet member for children, young people and families, said of the initiative: “There’s no intention on our part to undermine parents, and we would encourage young people to speak to their parents about their situation. The nurses are not just there to give out contraception willy-nilly.”

Honestly, talk about loading the gun of every ‘Disgusted of Didcot’ (though in fairness, ‘willy-nilly’ was just asking for trouble).

The point is however, I’m ‘Injured of Iffley’ AND ‘Angered of Abingdon’ all rolled into one, so it was inevitable my blood would boil and my spleen would vent as I thought of every Guardian-reading do-gooder conspiring to bring down Church, State and the WI.

Except...

Hell... except I realised I didn’t know a thing about the subject. Not a jot. Zero. Nada.

My opinion, albeit fiercely felt, was nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction based upon years of reading Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and watching TV’s Little House on The Prairie.

Sure, like everyone else, I have views on what I consider ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’, but I also realise that occasionally I judge without reason or rhyme.

And while being smug, self-righteous and holier-than-thou undoubtedly has its compensations (it’s so empowering), it can also turn you into one of the biggest bores that ever stalked the face of the planet.

Which is why I wish this project well.

The number of facts, figures and statistics I can quote on the subject of under-age pregnancies you could put on the back of a zit.

Indeed, my only academic grasp of the subject has been learned from the likes of Trisha and Jeremy Kyle on daytime tv.

So while my gut feeling is that this scheme will only encourage more teenage girls to have sex, I don’t have a single fact at my fingertips to support this argument.

And as, thank God, there are people concerned enough to try to deal with this problem, I think – for once – the best I can do is not pontificate from my ivory tower, but rather admit my ignorance, shut up, and let those professionals who are at the coal-face do their jobs.