Condoms in Schools: The Uproar Is Over : Parents Feel Little Urge to Protest a Service That Can Save Lives

Last year, there was a brief uproar in the Valley involving the distribution, at San Fernando High School, of contraceptives to students at the school’s health clinic. To critics of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s effort to combat teen-age pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, it was another sign of excess and declining values against which parents were sure to rebel.

Well, it hasn’t been much of a rebellion, and the programs are operating smoothly. At many high schools, condom distribution has become an uneventful part of the day. A Los Angeles Times poll of high schools throughout the city, in fact, found that just 5% of parents at most schools had exercised their right to deny their children access to birth-control devices.

Also, relatively few students were seeking condoms. On average, fewer than 160 condoms a day were being handed out among a population of 127,000 high school students.

Still, groups such as Parents and Students United of the San Fernando Valley stridently oppose the contraceptive plan, and they continue to state, incorrectly, that the distribution of condoms at schools has wrested control from parents. In fact, parents only have to note on a form that they do not want their child to have contraceptives. It’s that simple.

Condom distribution in particular is vitally important. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, says that acquired immune deficiency syndrome--AIDS--is the leading cause of death in California among men aged 25 to 44.

Because of this disease’s long incubation period, experts say that AIDS sufferers aged 20 to 29 are likely to have contracted it in their teen-age years. If anything, parents and schools ought to be doing more to educate youths about the importance of condoms. Every step taken may help save a teen-ager from an awful and premature death.