Parental OK for teen birth control may not help

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Forcing clinics to require parents to approve contraception for teenagers could increase the rate of pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, according to new research released Tuesday.

A survey of U.S. teens showed that if they were required to show a signed consent form from a parent before getting prescription-only contraception such as birth control pills, many would instead opt for over-the-counter methods, such as condoms, or no contraception. Few said they would stop having sex.

"The implication is that parental notification wouldn’t be a good thing,” study author Dr. Rachel Jones of the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York told AMN Health.

Teenagers “wouldn’t stop having sex, they would just have unsafe sex,” she said.

In the report in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association, Jones and her team note that Congress has proposed legislation requiring parental involvement when teens seek prescription-only contraception at family planning clinics, reasoning that such requirements might discourage some teens from having sex.

Currently, Utah and Texas have established that clinics that receive a certain type of funding must require minors to produce a signed consent form from their parents before using any family planning services, Jones noted.

To investigate further, Jones and her team asked 1,526 girls younger than 18 who visited family planning clinics for reproductive health services what they would do if they needed to get permission from their parents before obtaining contraception.

Sixty percent of teens said that their parents already knew they were visiting the family planning clinic, and a similar percentage said they would continue to use the services even if they were required to involve their parents.

However, 70 percent of teens whose parents didn’t know they were at the clinic said they would stop coming if parental notification was required.

Nearly 50 percent of them said they would use an over-the-counter method. Seven percent reported they’d stop having sex, and many more said they would instead rely on withdrawal or no contraception at all.

“We found very few teens would stop from having sex after a law like this,” Jones said.

She added that the fact that many teens’ parents already knew they were at the clinic is a sign the clinics are doing a good job, since clinics often encourage teens to talk about contraception with their parents.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association, January 19, 2005.

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