A new system implemented in Wales, whereby morning-after pills are distributed for free on request, has reportedly failed to reduce teenage pregnancy rates.
Over 700 high street pharmacies in Wales can now provide the morning-after pill free of charge, even to girls as young as 13, without consent from a parent or guardian.
However, the new scheme is reported to have had ‘little impact on teenage pregnancy’ according to a documentary aired by BBC Wales.
Professor David Paton of Nottingham University emphasised that: “Contrary to what people were hoping, the introduction of the morning-after pill for young people didn’t have any effect in terms of reducing teenage pregnancies.”
One GP, Dr Caroline Scherf, commented that despite girls taking the morning after pill “there is still a very high chance they end up pregnant’.
It has also been discovered that in areas where pharmacies are providing an emergency birth control scheme there was a 5% rise in STIs among teenagers (12% of them occurring in persons under 16). This suggests that the scheme has actually encouraged unsafe sex which in turn has lead to an increase in rates of STIs.
Critics have warned that the morning-after pill could become a normalised form of contraception rather than an emergency measure.
Josephine Quintavalle of Comment on Reproductive Ethics stated: “The idea that young girls can just walk into a chemist will mean they become even less responsible about sexuality.”
Dr Peter Saunders, CEO of the Christian Medical Fellowship, emphasised that the system makes a “dangerous assumption that there is no right or wrong in teenage sexual activity – just choice.”
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