At Portland, Maine’s King Middle School, a trip to the school clinic could mean more than just an aspirin or a bandage. School officials are discussing the idea of offering contraception to middle school children as young as 11 years old. The school clinic has already been offering condoms to students, and now they want to expand the menu to include prescription contraceptives.
While it’s bad enough that the school would implicitly sanction sexual behavior among children by dispensing contraception to young girls, the school goes even further by not requiring that the clinic notify parents if their child is given birth control pills.
Parents must sign up for clinic services for their children to be eligible, but the clinic need not tell parents which services are offered to their children.
Children who are sexually involved have much deeper problems that are left unaddressed by the band-aid approach of birth control. This practice also paves the way for a cover-up of sexual abuse, with children increasingly at risk.
Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council. This article is excerpted from the Washington Update that he compiles for the FRC.
