Tag: teen pregnancy

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With sex ed, contraception–and Plan B–NYC teen pregnancy rate drops

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Image:The teen pregnancy rate among New York City’s public high school students dropped 27% over a decade, new city data shows. Among 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19, 73 became pregnant in 2010. That’s down from 99 of 1,000 girls who became pregnant in 2001.

“We’re seeing that there are two things happening: teens are both delaying sex, and those that are having sex are more likely to use contraceptives,” Deborah Kaplan, assistant commissioner of the New York City Department of Health’s Bureau of Maternal, Infant and Reproductive Health, told MSNBC.com. “Our efforts to make sex education and birth control more widely available in public high schools are working.”

According to the health department’s numbers, she’s right. From 2001 to 2011, there was a 12-point drop in the proportion of public high school students who have ever had sex: 51% to 39%. And from just 2009 to 2011, the proportion of sexually active female students who used hormonal contraception (Plan B included) or long-acting reversible contraception (such as an IUD) the last time they had intercourse increased from 17 to nearly 27%. Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Teenagers and the Morning-After Pill

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When a teenager goes in for a checkup, the pediatrician often asks the parent to step outside so the doctor can talk to the youngster one-on-one about sensitive topics, like whether she is using drugs or is sexually active.

Now the nation’s leading pediatrics organization is encouraging doctors to also talk to teenagers about the morning-after pill — and to send girls home with prescriptions for emergency contraception, just in case.

The recommendation, announced last week by the American Academy of Pediatrics, is the latest salvo in the contentious debate over access to emergency contraception. Ever since the Food and Drug Administration approved levonorgestrel (now sold under the brand name Plan B One Step, and generically as Next Choice), advocates have pushed to make it more easily accessible.

Several medical societies, including those representing gynecologists and pediatricians, favor making emergency contraceptives available over the counter, since the drugs are supposed to be taken within five days of unprotected sex in order to be effective. In 2006, levonorgestrel was made available over-the-counter for women age 18 and older. In 2009, after a legal fight, the age was lowered to 17. Read full article.