Fatimah Ali: The morning after . . .

ANY parent with teenagers hopes they'll reach adulthood with no unwanted pregnancies.

With all of the uproar about giving 17-year-old girls access without a prescription to Plan B, the Teva-manufactured morning-after pill, I'm curious why we're still having this discussion when birth control pills have been available since 1960.

It's a question that baffles many, including my dad, Dr. Deurward Hughes, a retired OBGYN who practiced in Philadelphia for more than 40 years. Unlike the so-called "abortion pill," RU-486, Plan B, if taken within 72 hours after having unprotected sex, gives a woman an 89 percent chance of preventing an unwanted pregnancy.

But, what about Plan A, a sure-fire pregnancy-prevention plan?

"I think it's fine for 17-year-olds to have access to Plan B without their parents' consent; they're having sex, so they may need it," my father says to me unflinchingly. But these days, he adds sternly, there's no excuse for any woman to have an unwanted pregnancy.

He might seem liberal about teen sex now, but he was far different raising my sisters and me. In his practice, he counseled many teenage girls about sex, but at home, he left the sex discussion up to our mother, who simply said, "Don't do it until you're married."

Today, Dad says using both the pill and condoms is the safest method for women to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and STDs and still wonders why so many don't take advantage of these "insurance policies."

I think it's both a moral and a self-esteem issue, and both women and men have to care about each other enough to plan their lives more carefully.

As the mother of four daughters and one son, I'm much more open-minded than my parents when talking with my children about sex. I let them know they can talk with me, and that I expect them to plan for healthy futures. Plenty of teens have sex AND prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Although I don't condone it morally and spiritually, I'm also fully aware that this is 2009 and the old-fashioned values that required marriage first have evaporated. I tell my kids, when they ask, that while I wasn't a virgin when I got married, I hope that my youngest daughters will be.

In the meantime, we have honest discussions to ensure that they have all of the information they need to make good decisions about valuing and protecting their bodies. It's a lesson that their older sister taught me some years back, when a $600 doctor's bill with her name on it arrived in my mail for a prenatal test that's performed during the third trimester of pregnancy.

I was alarmed, since she was only 15 at the time. As a mother, I paid close attention to the monthly cycles of all four of my daughters. If she was sexually active and in a third-trimester pregnancy, how could I have missed it? Especially, since I had seen her plenty of times in her skivvies and she was still as skinny as a rail.

I immediately called the doctor's office to inquire, and they were tight-lipped, citing privacy issues. When I confronted my daughter, a huge argument erupted because I refused to believe her insistence that the bill was a mistake.

Armed with my "evidence," I refused to believe that, especially since her name is so unusual.

My daughter was crestfallen that I didn't believe her and insisted that she was still a virgin. And besides, she cried, "If I were pregnant, I'd tell you first, Mom. And, just for the record, I'd never be that stupid."

Those words hit me hard, and assured me that at least some of the values I was trying to instill had reached her. Turns out the hospital had made a mistake and billed the wrong person.

And I had to eat crow about it for years, but she taught me a valuable lesson about parenting. Children do listen when you talk with them about sex, morals and protection - and do want guidance from their parents.

We certainly don't have to let them know all of our personal business, but they need to feel safe about talking to us about their own sexuality.

And then maybe we won't need pharmaceutical firms to manufacture more pills for women who are afraid they'll have regrets without them. *

Fatimah Ali is a journalist, media consultant and an associate member of the Daily News editorial board.