Giving the Pill to 11-Year-Old Girls

When I was a teen-ager, some of the boys carried a condom in their wallets. Just one.
It made a round imprint in the leather, a symbol of maturity or masculinity or something.
Once in a while, somebody actually used one. Mostly they got yellow and dried out and forgotten, but not so forgotten you’d let you parents see your wallet.
That was birth control.
We’ve come a long way.
King Middle School Board of Education in Portland, Maine, has decided by a 7-2 vote to allow the school health center to give birth-control prescriptions (pill, patch) to girls. The Middle School, with an enrollment of about 600, is for grades 6-8. Ages generally run 11 to 13.
We have vacationed in Portland and area several times. A one-hour flight (great airport) or a 12-hour drive. An attractive, diverse small city on the waterfront with great restaurants, different shopping, a wonderful art museum, a couple colleges including the Maine College of Art. And lobster.
The health centers are operated by the Portland Division of Public Health which recommended the birth control measures. They have been doing this at the high schools since 2003.
The King Health Center has been providing condoms as part of its reproductive health program since 2000. Abstinence counseling is part of its program.
Five of 134 students who visited King’s health center in the last school year reported being sexually active.
Students must have signed parental permission to use the health centers. But state law does not allow the center to inform parents about services the students receive. The centers do encourage the students to stop having intercourse and also to inform their parents.
According to the Maine Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the percentage of middle school students in Maine who reported having sexual intercourse dropped from 23 percent in 1997 to 13 percent in 2005.
That and some of the statistics in this piece were taken from an article by Kelley Bouchard in the Portland Press Herald.
According to its Web site, King Middle School’s motto is, “Knowledge, Motivation, Spirit + Teaching, Learning, Caring Equals Success.” It’s ungrammatical.