As Britain continues to have the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Western Europe, school children under the age of consent are being given the pill without the consent of their parents.
In hundreds of state secondary schools across the country condoms are also being offered to pupils under 16 years old (the legal age of consent). And if they express an interest, girls are referred for contraceptive injections and implants, where a small rod is inserted under the skin to prevent conception for up to three years.
Policy is set in education authorities, but the confidential service is already offered in areas including Bristol, Berkshire, Peterborough, West Midlands, Northumbria and County Durham.
School nurses providing advice and referrals — without the consent of parents — is seen as the only way to reach the most at-risk girls.
The NHS says it is critical that “young people are not put off” by the fear that their parents will get involved.
More than aspirin
At the age of 14 Izabela Motyl from Middlesex felt a headache coming on in double maths and put her hand up to go to see the school nurse.
Izabela, who’s now 17, said: “I went in and sat down, and the nurse explained she couldn’t give me an aspirin without permission from my parents. But before I went back to my lesson, she did offer me a confidential service on contraception — and told me my mum and dad wouldn’t need to know.
“I told her I was a still virgin, but she gave me two condoms because she said it was important people my age have stuff around. I was a bit shocked. I thought: ‘What must she think of me?’ — but I took them anyway. I’d recently started going out with a new boyfriend, the brother of a friend I’d got to know better through Facebook, so I thought I’d take the condoms just in case.”
A few weeks later, just after her 15th birthday, Izabela had sex at her home while her mother, an airline hospitality worker, and her stepfather, a foreman, were out of the house.
Mother furious
Izabela didn’t tell her mother she was sexually active, so she was furious when she later found out, by chance, that her daughter was on the Pill. Izabela had got the Pill after she went back to see the school nurse, who referred her to a clinic for contraception.
Izabela’s mother approached the school to be told that it was policy for birth control advice to be given to pupils under 16 without parental consent.
Contraceptive Culture
“Stories like that of Izabela highlight the disturbing ‘contraceptive culture’ that is actively encouraging our children to have sex,” said Christian Concern Director Andrea Williams.
She added: “The current system means that schools and medical professionals are robbing parents of the ability to give advice to their own children on what’s right and wrong. It also makes a mockery of the age of consent law to make it almost meaningless.”
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