<p>I live in Maine, near Portland. I actually know one of the school board members who voted in favor of the provision of birth control. I have to say that I have mixed feelings about it, but there are some facts that would bear repeating:</p>
<p>1) “The school” is not giving out birth control pills. This particular school has a medical clinic run by the city of Portland located in the school because of the high proportion of low-income children in the school who would otherwise have little or no access to health care. The clinic is the entity that would prescribe BC.
2) Parents have to consent to allow their children to go to the clinic.
3) The children of parents who do not consent can still see the school nurse just as children in schools without clinics do.
4) The clinic has been giving out condoms for years without invoking public hysteria.
5) The clinic determined that there were a small number of 14 and 15 yr olds who were sexually active. This program was aimed at them, not at 11 yr olds. Apparently, it was not felt that they could legally restrict this particular form of health care to students above a certain age, even if they don’t intend to offer younger ones.
6) ANY doctor in Maine to whom a 14 yr old goes for healthcare, including BC, is required to treat her and not allowed to share the details of that treatment with her parents, whether she is a medicaid case, an insured patient, or a self-pay. [Whether we like it or not.]
7) Maine rejected the federally-subsidized abstinence-only sex education course pushed by the Bush administration in favor of a more comprehensive one.
8) Maine has the fifth-lowest rate of teenage pregnancy in the USA.
9) [Very involved middleclass] Parents I know with children in the school support the program.
10) They also report that Fox News was at the school shining bright lights into the classrooms from across the street and trying to film students through the windows. Nice.</p>
<p>Read this article because it addresses pregancies of the 10-14 year old girls. THAT has gone DOWN. WAY to go Maine and other states that are doing something positive about this.</p>
<p>Those poster who thought there not were very many girls that age having sex might want to consider that the previous reporting year to the new report there were about 7000 births to girls of this age and from previous statistics cited on this thread only about 33% of teen pregancies result in births (1/3 miscarry, 1/3 abort). Figure 20,000+ pregnancies, so it may be 40,000 or more who are sexually active. It doesn’t seem like a isolated event, unfortunately.</p>
<p>yourworld, unless you can provide data to substantiate that assertion, you’re just speculating because you don’t want to admit that pragmatically, the idea of providing birth control is probably good.</p>
<p>Since you have yet to even show data SUGGESTING that sexual abuse might be more prevalent, you have no credibility.</p>
<p>Are you saying the domineering adults who molest young girls will not escalate to full sex knowing the girls can get BC from school just for the asking ?</p>
<p>By the way from now on, I want everything you say be documented by independent studies, too.</p>
<p>Everything I present as factual will be backed up by relevant sources on request.</p>
<p>You’re either implying that sexual abuse is up (in which case you need to present something other than hearsay, or you’re making an inane remark, since sexual abuse could be up but so could devil worship, for all we know. Let me know which one it is.</p>