“Pregnancy Pact” School OKs Contraceptives
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The School Committee at the Gloucester, Mass. school where 17 teenage girls became pregnant amidst accusations of a “pregnancy pact” voted yesterday to allow the school’s health clinic to distribute contraceptives.
The school’s previous policy was to not provide contraceptive to it’s students. While other schools have a similar policy to not provide the pill or condoms to students, this school made the headlines for having four times the national average rate of teenage pregnancies.
The school will allow parents to opt their children out of receiving contraceptives, but asked parents to consider carefully before they made the choice to opt out.
So is this the best thing to do? Opponents of contraceptives being available in schools argue that providing them will encourage teens to have sex. Proponents counter that teens are going to have sex anyway and they should have the education and the contraception to do it safely.
But what if girls are trying to get pregnant? You’ve seen the stories about a “pregnancy pact” and having contraceptives available won’t stop anyone getting pregnant if girls deliberately don’t use them. But the much reported-on “pregnancy pact” has never been confirmed, and has been denied by many of the teen moms involved.
Most teenage girls don’t want to be pregnant, a lot of them are sexually active, regardless of what their parents and teachers. What teens see and read on television, movies, magazines, and what their friends are doing, has a much greater effect on whether they have sex, than whether the health center provides the pill or not.
What do you think? Should schools be giving out the pill and condoms?
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