Maine Middle-Schoolers Can Get Birth Control at School

By Anastacia Mott Austin

With a 7-2 vote, the administrative committee at Portland, Maine’s King Middle School decided Wednesday to allow the city-run public health clinic housed at the school to dispense birth control pills to sexually active students.

The decision was made after the clinic made the request to serve high-school-aged students who were still attending middle school. A survey performed by the clinic last year revealed a very small number of students, aged 14 and 15, reported being sexually active.

But the resulting uproar has more to do with the fact that the school is also attended by 11-year-olds who could presumably get the contraception, and that the clinic is bound by confidentiality laws, so that a minor child might be able to obtain birth control pills without her parents’ knowledge.

"We are dealing with children," said former school nurse Diane Miller at a public meeting. "I am just horrified at the suggestion."

Others feel that while it’s not ideal for young teenagers to be sexually active, it’s better to have them taking birth control pills than becoming parents.

Portland’s district coordinator of school nurses Amanda Rowe told reporters, "I see students every day whose lives could be ruined by an unwanted pregnancy who are having sexual intercourse and who need protection."

The decision was prompted in part by the incidence of seven pregnancies among middle-school students over the past four years. King Middle School serves a large percentage of economically disadvantaged students, who are statistically more likely to face problems such as early sexual intercourse and teenage pregnancy.

Sarah Thompson, a member of the committee who voted to approve the plan, and also the mother of an eighth-grader at the King school, told reporters, "I know I've done my job as a parent. But there may be a time when she doesn't feel comfortable coming to me—not all these kids have a strong parental advocate at home."

Another parent present at a subsequent committee meeting agreed. "I'd rather see a health center here and a kid be able to get birth control in a health center than see a pregnant 12-year-old," said middle-school parent Gail Kesich.

Some parents feel the issue is not that it’s birth control, but that a health clinic anywhere could dispense medications to their children without their knowledge.

The clinic does require a parental consent form for their children to visit the health center, but once signed, the form does not permit the clinic to inform parents about what their children are doing there. According to state privacy laws, they are not allowed to, even if the patients are minors.

But something needs to be done, say proponents, to protect the kids who are sexually active. Mike McCarthy, King’s school principal, told the press, "We have to, in some cases, protect kids from risky behavior, that in some cases they are not talking to their parents about."