Birth Control For Maine Middle Schoolers
School Board Approves Birth Control Options For Students In Grades 6 Through 8
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Play CBS Video Video Maine Contraception Reactions "CBS News RAW": Members of the Portland, Maine community react to a plan that will enable middle school students to obtain birth control prescriptions from the school's health center.
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Video Birth Control For Students King Middle School in Portland is the first middle school in Maine that will make a full range of contraception available to students. Byron Pitts reports.
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A Maine school board has decreed that students at King Middle School will be able to obtain birth control pills and patches at their student health center, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007. (AP)
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King Middle School will become the first middle school in Maine, and apparently one of only a few in the nation, to make a full range of contraception available, including birth-control pills and patches.
Students would need parental permission to use the city-run health center in the school, but they wouldn't have to tell their parents they were seeking birth control.
“As a parent, I would hope that my child would come to me first,” school committee member Sarah Thompson told CBS News. “But if she doesn't feel comfortable, then I know that there's somebody there, and a support system in place for them to be able to talk to somebody."
“People I associate with are looking at me like, are you guys crazy? Is this really going to happen in Portland?” said school committee Chairman John Coyne, who opposed the new policy in the 7-2 vote by the Portland School Committee on Wednesday night.
According to a national survey, 18 to 20 percent of adolescents have had intercourse by age 14, reports CBS News national correspondent Byron Pitts.
There are no national figures on how many middle schools provide such services. Most middle schoolers range in age from 11 to 13.
“It's very rare that middle schools do this,” said Divya Mohan, a spokeswoman for the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care.
This week, the health center asked the committee to make birth-control pills available to high school-aged students who were still in middle school and unable to access the contraception available at the high school, said Portland School Committee member Robert O'Brien.
School officials said five of the school's 510 students would have qualified for the birth control under the program last year.
O'Brien, whose district includes King Middle School, said the notion that young children can now easily get birth-control pills is flat wrong.
“They don't just have a giant punch bowl full of pills,” he said,
The birth control will be given out only after extensive counseling, and no prepubescent children will get it, O'Brien said.
The lead school nurse said the health center’s staff would also encourage kids to talk with their parents, reports CBS affiliate WGME-TV.
But Coyne said a physically mature, savvy 11-year-old could get the birth control once the permission slip to use the center is signed.
“I think she could navigate the system,” he said.
Portland's three middle schools had seven pregnancies in the last five years, said Douglas Gardner, director of Portland's Health and Human Services Department. He said early reports of 17 pregnancies during the last four years were erroneous.
The King Middle School is among Portland's most diverse schools, with 31 languages spoken there and 28 percent of its students foreign-born. The school, located on the same peninsula as downtown Portland, draws from the islands in Casco Bay, wealthier neighborhoods overlooking the bay, and low-income triple deckers.
Fifty-four percent of the students are part of the federal free lunch program, which is an indicator of poverty.
Principal Michael McCarthy said the school had just one pregnancy last year, but students were reporting they were sexually active. The center has dispensed condoms since 2000, but because it could not prescribe birth-control pills, nurses referred the students to Planned Parenthood or Maine Medical Center.
“When they followed up, they found that in many cases, the kids weren't doing that,” McCarthy said.
The policy raises new legal concerns.
Sex with a nonspousal minor under 14 is considered gross sexual assault in Maine, and officials said it was unclear whether nurses at the health center would be required to report such activities.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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See all 406 CommentsThanks for answering my question!
Males are dumb as they only think of their control over a young girl.. Not all males..We live in an age where sexx is every where. Who will look out for our children. There are children that are on the list and that has hurt them when they are grown.They can''t live where they want..They do the shiit work cos they f---ed as children by having sexx.
We don''t use a lot of nick names for things here, but I notice in the U.S. you do quite often.
Kids need education about s.ex and morals...if they aren''t getting it at home then they need to be taught this at school. Medication is not the answer unless the girl is already sexually active and then only with parent''s permission. Give them condoms instead.
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See all 406 Comments