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scooterbug44

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May 8, 2007
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Most OK with birth control at school, poll finds

67 percent support handing out contraceptives, but qualms remain

Nov. 1, 2007

WASHINGTON - People decisively favor letting their public schools provide birth control to students, but they also voice misgivings that divide them along generational, income and racial lines, a poll showed.
Sixty-seven percent support giving contraceptives to students, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll. About as many ? 62 percent ? said they believe providing birth control reduces the number of teenage pregnancies.

"Kids are kids," said Danielle Kessenger, 39, a mother of three young children from Jacksonville, Fla., who supports providing contraceptives to those who request them. "I was a teenager once and parents don't know everything, though we think we do."

Yet most who support schools distributing contraceptives prefer that they go to children whose parents have consented. People are also closely divided over whether sex education and birth control are more effective than stressing morality and abstinence, and whether giving contraceptives to teenagers encourages them to have sexual intercourse.
"It's not the school's place to be parents," said Robert Shaw, 53, a telecommunications company manager from Duncanville, Texas. "For a school to provide birth control, it's almost like the school saying, 'You should go out and have sex.'"
Those surveyed were not asked to distinguish between giving contraceptives to boys or girls.
The survey was conducted in late October after a school board in Portland, Maine, voted to let a middle school health center provide students with full contraceptive services. The school's students are sixth- through eighth-graders, when most children are 11 to 13 years old, and do not have to tell their parents about services they receive.
Opt-out policy considered
Portland school officials plan to consider a proposal soon that would let parents forbid their children from receiving prescription contraceptives like birth control pills.
Teenage pregnancy rates have declined to about 75 per 1,000, down from a 1990 peak of 117, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research center. Still, nearly half of teens aged 15 to 19 report having had sex at least once, and almost 750,000 of them a year become pregnant.
The 67 percent in the AP poll who favor providing birth control to students include 37 percent who would limit it to those whose parents have consented, and 30 percent to all who ask.
Minorities, older and lower-earning people were likeliest to prefer requiring parental consent, while those favoring no restriction tended to be younger and from cities or suburbs. People who wanted schools to provide no birth control at all were likelier to be white and higher-income earners.
"Parents should be in on it," said Jennifer Johnson, 29, of Excel, Ala., a homemaker and mother of a school-age child. "Birth control is not saying you can have sex, it's protecting them if they decide to."
About 1,300 U.S. public schools with adolescent students ? less than 2 percent of the total ? have health centers staffed by a doctor or nurse practitioner who can write prescriptions, said spokeswoman Divya Mohan of the National Assembly of School-Based Health Care. About one in four of those provide condoms, other contraceptives, prescriptions or referrals, Mohan said.

Less than 1 percent of middle schools and nearly 5 percent of high schools make condoms available for students, said Nancy Brener, a health scientist with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Underlining the schisms over the issue, those saying sex education and birth control were better for reducing teen pregnancies outnumber people preferring morality and abstinence by a slim 51 percent to 46 percent.
Younger people were likelier to consider sex education and birth control the better way to limit teenage pregnancies, as were 64 percent of minorities and 47 percent of whites. Nearly seven in 10 white evangelicals opted for abstinence, along with about half of Catholics and Protestants.

Split on encouragement issue
In addition, 49 percent say providing teens with birth control would not encourage sexual intercourse and a virtually identical 46 percent said it would.
Though men and women have similar views about whether to provide contraceptives to students, women are likelier than men to think it will not encourage sexual intercourse, 55 percent to 43 percent.
Asked when young people should first be allowed to get birth control, ages 16 and 18 drew the most responses, while only a third chose age 15 or younger. Women's selections averaged just over age 16, slightly higher than men, while young people and Westerners preferred younger ages than others.
"I'd be pulling my kids out of that school," Ron Wrobel, 55, an engineer from Port Huron, Mich., said of the Maine middle school. He said birth control should be for teens at least 17 years old.

Mirroring the rift that has played out in countless battles in Congress, Democrats were likelier than Republicans to favor freer access to birth control and to have more faith that it reduces teenage pregnancies. Forty-five percent of Republicans _ including 51 percent of GOP women _ say birth control should not be provided to any students, compared to 19 percent of Democrats.

The poll involved telephone interviews with 1,004 adults from Oct. 23-25. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
 

scooterbug44

SoWal Expert
May 8, 2007
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I don't have a problem w/ schools distributing birth control such as condoms, but I question them becoming involved in prescribing medication w/ potentially large side effects - as in birth control pills.

Also note that the survey just asked about general birth control, it didn't distinguish between free condoms and prescription medicine.
 

Jdarg

SoWal Expert
Feb 15, 2005
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In Portland, a child must first have parental permission to see the school nurse for anything. If the child is sick, I am sure the parent is going to be aware of it and will take the child to the family doctor. If the child says "I need permission to go to the school nurse" without a reason, then I guess something's up, huh?;-)

This part of the story was included when this first broke- the initial outrage was that once a child had parental permission to see the school nurse, then he/she could see the nurse and receive contraception without any further parental involvement. Of course the media kinda jumped over this part and made it sound like condoms were being passed out like Halloween candy.

If my kid came home and asked for my permission to see the school nurse, I would kinda know what was going on.:roll:
 

scooterbug44

SoWal Expert
May 8, 2007
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I'm all for birth control & sex ed, I just find the whole idea of a school being "the doctor" weird. Can of medical liability worms just got cracked WIDE open IMO. Is the school going to be screening the health of these kids, doing follow up exams, getting family history, dealing with insurance etc?

I thought that if you were treating a minor, you had to get guardian permission and the guardian also had the right to know about your medical issues?

Didn't understand how on last week's Private Practice she could give an exam and run tests on an 11 year old w/o parental consent but couldn't tell the parent about her findings.
 
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seacrestkristi

Beach Fanatic
Nov 27, 2005
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How could it possibly hurt anyone? :dunno: It might help save a child's childhood.:blink: IJS...one can always opt out.
 

scooterbug44

SoWal Expert
May 8, 2007
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Prescription medicine that messes w/ your moods and increases your chances for heart attacks or stroke can definitely hurt someone.

Prescription medicine that can involve a judgment call about whether it should be used by women who smoke, have migraines, gallbladder disease, hypertension, diabetes, epilepsy, sickle cell disease, elective surgery, a history of blood clots, liver or heart disease can definitely hurt someone.

I'm not saying that the pill is bad or that contraceptives are bad, just that because of the potential for misuse or complications it should be something dealt with by your doctor (who knows your medical history) and monitored.

A kid who can't be upfront enough or mature enough to see their family doctor or discuss it with their parent or guardian is not going to be upfront about their medical history or responsible enough to be able to use it effectively.
 

Matt J

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May 9, 2007
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I definitely think that condoms should be handed out in schools, as for the pill issue I'm not sure. I don't think it's so much a health risk as I searched and the side effects aren't life threatening:

bleeding between periods
weight gain
nausea
breast tenderness
headaches
mood changes
blood clots (usually occur only in women over 35 who smoke)

However, I don't agree with the pill as it takes care of the issue of pregnancy, but it does not address the issue of STD's. I don't feel that kids are informed or experienced enough to understand the ramifications of STD's. When I was a kid the issue wasn't STD's as we all assumed no one had any, but pregnancy which the pill generally stops.
 

Bdarg

Beach Fanatic
Jul 11, 2005
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Prescription medicine that messes w/ your moods and increases your chances for heart attacks or stroke can definitely hurt someone.

Prescription medicine that can involve a judgment call about whether it should be used by women who smoke, have migraines, gallbladder disease, hypertension, diabetes, epilepsy, sickle cell disease, elective surgery, a history of blood clots, liver or heart disease can definitely hurt someone.

I'm not saying that the pill is bad or that contraceptives are bad, just that because of the potential for misuse or complications it should be something dealt with by your doctor (who knows your medical history) and monitored.

A kid who can't be upfront enough or mature enough to see their family doctor or discuss it with their parent or guardian is not going to be upfront about their medical history or responsible enough to be able to use it effectively.

Lets not stray too far off the topic. This is the school NURSE we are talking about here mostly, not the school doctor or the school gynecologist. The article said that nationally on about 2% of the schools had a doctor of nurse practitioner who could write prescriptions, of those only 25% wrote prescriptions to anything. They did not give a statistic as to if any wrote prescriptions for birth control pills. Nurses cannot prescribe medicine. Suggesting that the school nurse is writing and filling prescriptions is a little overboard.

For my 2 cents, I would much rather the school nurse distribute over the counter birth control than discover the need to stock baby formula in the high school book store. Teenagers will be teenagers. They also need to graduate from high school and grow up a bit before considering children, in my opinion.

Education, abstinence and availability of birth control are the best ways to keep teenagers safe from STDs and unwanted pregnancies. I think that without the first the other two are not likely preventatives.
 
Apr 16, 2005
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. I don't feel that kids are informed or experienced enough to understand the ramifications of STD's. When I was a kid the issue wasn't STD's as we all assumed no one had any, but pregnancy which the pill generally stops

8th Grade Health just about covers it ALL.
 
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