Sexual Health in Kids Ignored

Oct 19, 11:50 AM

Current Headlines: The message to girls about sex in most American schools is simple:

Don't to it.

And: Uh-oh. You did it.

I learned this week that 70 percent of American school districts prohibit health care workers _ the school nurse, or even workers at a school health center _ from discussing contraception with young men or women.

Most, I was told, allow only abstinence counseling and pregnancy testing, an ironic duo.

In Michigan a 2006 law prohibits the dispensing of any kind of birth control, including condoms, on school property.

That's why the news from Maine is heartening:

The school board in Portland this week voted 7-2 to allow one middle school's health center to write prescriptions for birth control pills to girls who will range in age from 11 to 15.

WHAT'S BEHIND IT?

The King Middle School has 500 students. In the past four years, it and two other city middle schools reported 17 pregnancies, not counting secret miscarriages or abortions. Last year, five girls 14 and 15 years old told King health personnel that they were sexually active.

The new measure requires a student to get parental permission to use the health care center. But it protects the student's privacy about what happens there.

One board member said that she's confident in the job she's done so far with her eighth-grade daughter. But she wisely acknowledged the time may come "when she doesn't feel comfortable coming to me." And, widening her perspective beyond her own experience, she said, "Not all these kids have a strong parental advocate at home."

You bet they don't.

THE BOARD DECIDES

Michigan's law makes it among the most conservative states in the union when it comes to sexual health care for kids. That's what I learned from Debbie Brinson at the School Community Health Alliance of Michigan.

Its 87 school health centers _ most in what she called "high risk" areas like metro Detroit _ not only can't prescribe pills but can't even offer condoms.

Meanwhile, that middle school in Portland has handed out condoms for seven years!

Brinson said each school board decides how much talk about sexuality can occur. It's kids who want it, she said. Two years ago, students in Baldwin, Mich., a town of 1,100 in the northwest Lower Peninsula, begged the school board in a formal presentation to allow information about sexual health. The board agreed.

Bravo.

CHILDREN ILL-SERVED

Perhaps it's time for kids to march on state capitals demanding not only open discussion of sexual health issues, but some tangible help in combating the risk of pregnancy and disease.

Alas, it's the kids who need the most help who are least likely to organize.

That leaves it in the laps of parents who ought to know, as that Portland board member knew, that no matter how much they trust their own children to confide in them, many of the children of the world are lonely and alone at the most confusing time of their lives.

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(Contact SUSAN AGER at 313-222-6862 or sager(at)freepress.com)

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