To think that underage girls should need their parents permission to get contraception

[happypiggywiggy]

I think it's crazy that girls under 16 can show up at a family planning clinic or their GP alone and ask to be put on contraception without their parents permission. I'm pretty sure it hasn't always been that way and you needed your parents permission at one point.

My DD is only 10 but it scares me that in just four or five years she will be able to go on the pill without telling me or needing my permission.

I just think that if my teenage DD is going to be using something hormonal like the pill or implant or injection then I'd want to know so I can keep an eye on her and also be on the look out for any bad side effects she may have. Some women have a terrible time with hormonal contraception and I just think that when you're young having someone else keep an eye on you is a good idea iyswim.

perfectstorm i totally agree with you .

Nancy, me too. Emotional hurts (and almost all STDs) heal in time. Major crashes in old bangers, not so much,

Though I know I took a lot of bloody stupid risks and am still here, as are almost all my peers. A handful aren't - but none of them because they were screwed up by shitty early relationships (and, I may add, a couple had lovely early relationships which didn't screw them up at all!).

Cars scare me most, Class A drugs second. Sex, and oh dear, oh well, let's hope they manage to make smart choices.

Where's that quote from oaksettle?

I don't think it's 'boring' (WTF does that actually mean in relation to this discussion?) and smug to be realistic about teenagers having sex.

Nearly every parent of teenagers I know in real life is in denial or doesn't know what their teen is getting up to. Thank God those teens (who are just the same as teens have always been - no better, no worse) have somewhere to go to discuss and receive contraception. Teenagers can't or don't always talk to their parents about sex (or anything else).

As opposed to the huge wealth of data showing access to good sex ed and birth control reduces not only unplanned teenage pregnancy, but age virginity is lost? I would link but I don't really know where to start - there are pages on St Louis alone just this past month, never mind comparative tables for European pregnancy rates. But hey, if you want to cite a lone statistical anomaly from 30 years ago while calling all those who disagree with you "smug" and "boring" then that reasoned and valuable contribution is most definitely your prerogative. As is my amusement. ;)

I do think decent sex ed is the main answer, though, and it should not just be about what happens when part a slots into part b and tadpole c reaches tube d. It needs to include emotions, and relationships, and power imbalances, and media pressure, and the problem with porn as a resource, as well as the bare facts. And sadly it should probably also educate on enthusiastic consent, and how images spread across the internet (Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Middleton aren't safe, so why would Hannah in Year 10 be?) and bullying, cyber and real.

I don't think contraception is the problem, here. It's the fact kids are having sex too young and they are almost encouraged to see that as normal.

Kids have always had sex 'too young'! Nothing has changed one jot since I was a young teen back in the dark ages (I'm 48). Girls of 13, 14, 15 have always had sex they just didn't talk about it, they lied, they hid pregnancies.

It's from a pro-abstinence, anti-abortion submission to Parliament. By a bloke who thinks gay people are more likely to be paedophiles than straight people. Because Science, of course - not bigotry at all.

I thought the Gillick ruling meant that as long as you understand the ramifications you can consent for your own healthcare even if underage.

Victoria Gilick lost her case.

link

Thank goodness I say.

Well done, perfectstorm - stuff like oaksettle's needs debunking, fast.

oaksettle how do you explain that teenage pregnancies have been falling for about a decade now, post-Gillick?

What about the girls who want to go on the pill to help control their periods? I have a friend who had crippling period pains as a teenager but wouldn't see her GP about the pill (absolutely no plans on having underage sex!) because she knew he would tell her parents and they'd presume the worst.

oak boring and smug has no part in parenting teens.

Me and my 15 year old dd accessed contraception for her together as she asked for my advice.

Not boring or smug just sensible and caring.

Are you boring and smug?

Oh yes and this same dd was badly hurt in a fatal crash on a well regulated school trip.

That kind if makes you realise your priorities really

Totally agree with perfectStorm as we lived it.

associated with a halt in the year-on-year increase in underage pregnancies for two years.

Because selective quoting is unhelpful, let's see the whole submission, "Submission from Dr Hans-Christian Raabe".

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmsctech/1045/1045we28.htm

Paton's underlying research appears in:

David Paton, The economics of family planning and underage conceptions, Journal of Health Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, March 2002, Pages 207-225, ISSN 0167-6296, dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0167-6296(01)00115-1.

which you can get from

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629601001151

(you might need a university login).

I'm not an economical statistician, but my gut feel is that the paper doesn't support the weight of interpretation Dr Raabe is placing on it, and that economic modelling is not an appropriate tool for studying this problem.

In 1985 we were all shit scared of dying of AIDS nobody was having unprotected sex. Fuck all to do with moral crap.

True that, Saucy.

Sorry, oak, but with population growth etc. the rate is still actually falling. The quotes you have used come from works shown to be inaccurate I will hunt the data out tomorrow. Too tired tonight.

oaksettle, are you going to give actual references for this stuff, to save us having to use proper grown-up bibliographic databases to do your homework for you, or are you just cut and pasting it complete with citation numbers to make it look all sciency and shit? Just putting "(Catholic Medical Quarterly)" doth not a citation make.

That quote appears to come from this:

www.cmq.org.uk/CMQ/2013/May/over-counter-OCP.html

It's an un-reviewed opinion piece. I'm not going to wade through the underlying research to see if it's an accurate summary, but (hey, call me a cynic) I'd be willing to bet that someone writing for a Catholic journal might not be conducting systematic reviews, because if he were conducting systematic reviews, he'd publish it in a proper journal.

Oh, and oaksettle, since Paton's paper convinces you, could you explain it to the class in simple language? It's all a bit technical, you see, which is why I wouldn't want to be confident about making broad claims from its conclusions. You obviously understand it in detail, so can tell us why it convinces you.

My reading of it is that he doesn't find sufficient evidence in a small (two year) trial of an intervention where the numbers involved are small against many background effects (most teenagers don't get pregnant, after all) to reject the null hypothesis. It's an appropriately cautious piece: something happened, you look at the numbers, you can't find a demonstrable effect. That's hardly surprising: given the number of children that believe that Coca Cola is a spermicide and that you can't get pregnant by having sex standing up, an economic paper founded on the idea that all teenagers contemplating sexual activity are rational actors fully informed of the Gillick judgement seems a stretch. But you obviously draw stronger conclusion from it, so could you explain those? You've read the paper, yes?

oaksettle,

(a) That Paton quote doesn't say what you say it does: you claim it says that teenage pregnancy rates fell whereas in fact it just says that they didn't rise.

(b) It does, however, get the date of the event it's describing wrong. The 1985 Gillick ruling didn't restrict access for under 16 year olds to family planning services in England and Wales. The 1985 House of Lords ruling (against Victoria Gillick) was the one that reaffirmed the principles of access for under 16 year olds; it was the 1984 Appeal Court ruling in her favour that briefly restricted them for a period of ten months before being overturned.

(c) If you look at a graph of under-16 pregnancy (birth+abortion) rates over the last 50 years there are plenty of periods when the rates actually fall (from 1975-1978, say, or 1991-1994). It's hard to attach much significance to an alleged two-year staying-roughly-the-same phenomenon.

Duh.... You are my hero!

Oh and OP YABU.

And you too tortoise...

Oh look: oaksettle has withdrawn their postings and scuttled off. What a surprise that is. We didn't all go "ooh, that convinces me", and behind the cut and paste there's...nothing.

As pp have said. There are actually other things to be more afraid of than your teenager having sex.

I had wonderful parents, truly I did/do. They did everything they were supposed to do and kept strict watch over my curfews. The only thing we could never discuss with eachother was sex. They were squeamish about it, I afraid of their disaproval. But they didn't worry, because I was a geek, a bookish nerd. Not the stereotypical loose teenage girls with a bad set of morals (I seriously doubt that this is even a typical representation of reality).

Yet I did get pregnant at 15. Not through ignorance, I knew about contraceptives and my rights to obtain them. But I was a teenager, I was embarrased to talk to my parents (who would have cut me off from my boyfriend), afraid someone would see me at the GPs and quite frankly, stupid enough to let my impulses rule me good common sense to wear protection.

It didn't end my life, didn't ruin my choices. My parents were wonderfully supportive and have never shied from any subject with me again. My DS is 8 now and a wonderful child. I went on to have my DD (same partner) at 21 and though we are no longer together (split up after 7 years together), I get on wonderfully with my ex even now. And funnily enough, I don't regret having sex young - simply because I was in love and we had many happy years together afterward.

I have a career to be proud of and have a lovely life that I am very happy with.

^^ btw, this is not a promotion for 'underage sex is fine!' but rather pointing out that it is of course worthwhile to be understanding of your children, to accept their choices and help them to avoid the major repercussions that could occur (such as pregnancy, STIs etc). When you can't do that or the teenager in question cannot for whatever reason safely talk to his/her parents, then I for one am extremely glad that they have the right to access contraception in privacy.

So OP, YABVVVVU.