Norplant: But One Option Among Many : Teach safe sex, responsibility and abstinence too

The Los Angeles Board of Education voted unanimously in 1987 to accept the grant that allowed it to open health clinics in three high schools. One was San Fernando High, at the junction of the Golden State and Simi Valley freeways. It was decided--six years ago--that these clinics would provide many health services, including the dispensing of contraceptives. It was decided that parents could bar their children from the clinics altogether by simply signing a form. Parents also had the right to bar their children from receiving specific services, such as contraceptives. Finally, parents could change their minds and add or remove restrictions at any time. They have the same rights today.

But it was also clear then that the situation was different once parental permission was in effect; then as now, under California law, a minor can obtain birth control devices and information without parental consent. It would have been illegal then, and remains so now, for school clinics to notify parents about the type of contraceptive issued to their children, or to even acknowledge they had been issued contraceptives.

ADDRESSING A NEED: One thing about the San Fernando High clinic has changed. It has added another form of birth control to the options open to students. We refer to the Norplant system, which is implanted beneath the skin of female recipients and releases birth control chemicals into the bloodstream for up to five years. The decision to provide the system was reached, publicly, last summer.

We offered our support when the first of these school clinics was opened in 1987, at Jordan High School in Watts. “The campus health center can help many youngsters avoid having babies, dropping out of school and ruining futures,” we said. That support has not wavered. More recently, we cited as courageous the efforts of Baltimore school officials to promote the use of Norplant as a method of contraception.

The health clinic at San Fernando High did not spur sexual excess among its students. The fact of the matter was that 40% of the students who were polled there six years ago reported that they were sexually active and two-thirds of those students said that they were not practicing birth control. That was why San Fernando High School was selected to have such a health clinic in the first place. Its clinic has served and continues to serve a pressing and admittedly disturbing need, and the use of the Norplant system is in no way at odds with that role.

NO AIDS SHIELD: Having said that, however, we do have some related concerns. When the public schools in Washington, D.C., reluctantly decided to offer latex condoms in a school health clinic, the move was based on indications of an alarming increase among juveniles who were infected with the AIDS virus. It cannot be stressed enough that the Norplant system offers no protection whatsoever against infection with AIDS or any other sexually transmitted disease. It must be pointed out that abstinence is the only foolproof method for avoiding these diseases and pregnancy.

Norplant has also been known to involve serious side effects in adult women. Particular care must be taken to monitor the few students who have received the Norplant system to ascertain its effects, if any, on their health. The clinic’s role, in this regard, is far from finished.

Considerable work remains to be done as well in emphasizing the role and responsibilities of young men in these matters, particularly those who refuse to use birth control methods and may feel that the use by some young women of Norplant frees young men from sexual responsibility. That is hardly the case, and a redoubled effort--throughout the school district--to discuss the virtues of abstinence, responsibility and care among young men is clearly in order.