GPS PUT 1 IN 20 UNDER-AGED GIRLS ON PILL
Thousands as young as 12 now on contraceptive
ONE in 20 schoolgirls – many as young as 12 – are now being prescribed the contraceptive Pill by GPs without their parents’ knowledge, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
A shock study found that family doctors are handing out the Pill to about 75,000 girls under 16 every year – a jump of 50 per cent in a decade.
Worryingly, parents are unlikely ever to find out because health workers do not have to inform them when they provide contraception to a minor.
Last night, senior Conservative MP Bob Neill called the figures ‘deeply shocking’ and said the practice was ‘destroying’ the childhood of young girls and ‘undermining responsible parents’. It came as family campaigners and doctors warned: The total number of underage girls – including 12-year-olds – using the oral contraceptive is likely to be even higher because sexual health clinics and
school nurses are also able to prescribe it;
Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are soaring as teenagers on the Pill increasingly feel they can dispense with condoms and engage in riskier sexual behaviour;
Underage sex is slowly being normalised and legalised – even though it is still against the law.
There is not enough information about the long-term health risks for teenagers on the Pill – something the study’s authors also highlight.
However, family planning groups argued yesterday that the increase should be welcomed, because greater use of the Pill has helped to cut teenage pregnancies.
In the study – the first-ever UK-wide one of its kind – researchers at King’s College London looked at official GP prescribing data.
They discovered the proportion of 12- to 15-year-old girls being prescribed the Pill rose from 3.3 per cent in 2002, to 5.2 per cent in 2011, the last year for which figures are available. It means the actual number of under 16s prescribed the Pill by GPs has grown from about 50,000 to around 75,000.
Dr Asia Rashed, of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science at King’s College London, who led the study, admitted: ‘I was surprised by the figure. Five per cent is high.’
But she added: ‘Governments want to prevent unwanted pregnancies – and under 16s are sexually active.’
In the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care, she and her colleagues warned: ‘There is little, if any, information on the long-term safety of these drugs in adolescents, in particular for girls aged under 16 years.’ Some versions of the Pill raise the risk of potentially fatal blood clots, said Dr Rashed, an expert in medicine safety, while long-term use has been linked to breast cancer.
Consultant pharmacist Stephen Tomlin, who contributed to the study, said there were ‘questions to be asked’ about the safety of teenage girls, many of whom are still developing physically.
He also pointed out just 40 per cent of women and girls taking the Pill in 2011 said it was for ‘contraceptive management’ – compared to 57 per cent in 2002. The contraceptive can be taken to control painful, heavy periods.
However, some say this has led to suspicions that girls are being less truthful with their GPs.
Although teenage pregnancies have dropped in recent years to a 40-year low, STI rates have jumped sharply since 2005. The number of new chlamydia cases recorded annually has nearly doubled to 206,774, gonorrhoea cases have risen by a similar proportion to 34,958, and herpes cases have leapt 79 per cent to 31,154. Without treatment, they can cause painful inflammation and even infertility.
Dr Trevor Stammers, a former GP who lectures on medical ethics, said: ‘The rate of STIs is unacceptably high. But if the contraceptive Pill is the main mechanism for reducing unplanned pregnancies, then you have to expect STIs will go up.’
He said the fact that any 12, 13 or 14-year-old had an STI was a ‘dreadful reflection of the state of neglect in which we have left our children’.
And he revealed he believed the recent scandals in Rochdale and Oxford, where social workers ignored claims by teenage girls that they were being abused by gangs of men, were ‘partly fuelled by the attitude that underage sex is normal’.
‘Prescribing the Pill to under 16s automatically gives encouragement to that awful scenario,’ said Dr Stammers, a former chairman of the Christian Medical Fellowship. Victoria Gillick, who led an unsuccessful legal bid in the 1980s to stop doctors prescribing contraception to under 16s without parental consent, said she believed the one in 20 figure was ‘just the tip of the iceberg’ because many girls now obtained the Pill from elsewhere.
Mrs Gillick, a mother of ten, also thought few under 16s were capable of understanding the implications of going on the Pill: ‘You can’t even get a 13 or 14-year-old to brush their hair every day – that is why we call them children.’
And she claimed that allowing under 16s access to contraception ‘has simply been applied outside the law, with impunity, to the absolute detriment of young girls’.
‘It has allowed social workers, doctors and the police to say, “This is a lifestyle choice for children”,’ she said. ‘That is wicked, it is bad medi- cine, and the neglect of our young.’ Tory MP Mr Neill said the report was ‘deeply shocking’, adding: ‘There may be exceptional circumstances when this is necessary but it is worrying if giving the Pill to girls as young as 12 is becoming routine.
‘If this is so widespread, and these figures suggest it is, we’re destroying young girls’ childhoods and undermining responsible parents who should know if their child is being put on the Pill. And if a girl as young as 12 is sexually active, surely someone is breaking the law?’
But Genevieve Edwards, Marie Stopes UK’s director of policy, added: ‘Over the past decade, teenage pregnancy rates have been falling and are now at a record low. We could do better though. Every young person deserves the confidence and knowledge to enjoy safe, healthy relationships when, and only when, they’re ready to.’
NATIONAL policy on underage sex can be summed up in the old expression: ‘If you can’t be good, be careful.’ Few thoughtful people can regard it as a success.
As so often with such policies, what was once shocking has quickly become normal.
Contraceptive pills are now given by the state to one underage schoolgirl in every 20, without their parents’ knowledge. Many of these girls are as young as 12.
Together with increasingly available abortion and the morning-after pill, this policy has succeeded in one rather crude way – the number of teenage pregnancies has at last begun to fall.
But sexual activity itself has increased, as is shown by the rising incidence of sexually transmitted disease. And the long-term consequences of medications and terminations on this scale cannot really be known. Being careful is not as good as being good, nor as effective.