The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has updated a 2005 policy statement and now advises Doctors to educate teenage patients about emergency contraception as well as administer prescriptions for those who are sexually active.
Emergency contraception includes Plan B, oral contraceptives, and ella.
"People say that if you make this available that kids will have more sex and less protected sex, and that is not true. Seven studies showed that is not true," says the University of Washington's professor of pediatrics and adolescent medicine Dr. Cora Bruener. "These methods are absolutely not an abortion."
According to US News, boys 18 and above and girls 17 and above currently have access to emergency contraception without a prescription, and that "34 out of every 1,000 women between 15 and 19 years old gave birth in 2010. "
Dr. Jennifer Reed of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center notes, "I think [the policy statement] will bring awareness to pediatricians and hopefully give guidance to what is accepted."
The study, which was published in the journal Pediatrics, asserts that half of teens are uneducated on the topic of emergency contraception.
Bruener believes that the AAP's new push for prescriptions will provide sexually active teens with the tools to deal with unexpected protection failures and decrease the pregnancy rate among adolescents. She states, "If we are going to do anything about reducing our teen pregnancy rate and make it not the highest in the developed world, we need to provide more education to family and children."
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