Condoms and Contraceptives in Junior High and High School Clinics
Everyone agrees the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases is a serious problem in sexually active children and teenagers. And everyone wants to do something about it. But what? Is the answer to set up clinics in junior high and high schools so students can have easy access to "family planning" services? ., Since I didn't know much about school clinics, I did some checking for myself. When I visited the school clinic in Little Rock's Forest Heights Junior High School, I asked the nurse, "If a student comes in with a sore throat, do you do a throat culture, or a fast strep test?" "Oh no. We don't do things like that," she explained. "So what do you do with kids who have a sore throat?" "We send them to their doctor." This was interesting because I had been told one reason these school clinics exist is because half the students don't go to doctors. "Well, what do you do for students in your clinic?" I asked. "Many of our students come from broken homes and have lots of problems they need to talk about." And student pregnancies are one of the big problems. Certainly, reducing the number of these is important. But how? "We let the girls choose what kind of birth control plan to be on," the nurse explained. "Sometimes they choose birth control pills or [an implant]." I also learned that seven girls in this junior high of under 800 students have 5-year birth control implants. But these were not put in at the junior high like they are at the high school across town. The school board prohibits dispensing contraceptives at the junior high, so students are sent down the road to the mall clinic to get their condoms or cotraceptives.