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A school in Oregon distributes condoms to school children as young as Year 6

A school in Oregon distributes condoms to school children as young as Year 6

If your primary school kid or 6th grader is given a condom, would you be grateful that the giver was looking out for them or it would make you mad? Read more…..

According to Chicago Sun;

An Oregon school district’s decision to distribute condoms to students — even as young as sixth graders is causing major controversy.

Superintendent Rick Hensel says the Gervais School District in Marion County is launching the program in the fall because nine students became pregnant this year, including one middle-school girl. What’s more, a study conducted at Oregon Health & Science University in nearby Portland found that 40 percent of Gervais High School students they surveyed admitted to “never” or only “sometimes” using condoms. Researchers also found that access to condoms in the town was scarce. Another factor in the decision was that the middle and high schools are only 40 feet apart and it would have been difficult to exclude one school from the program. The reaction on Twitter was mostly negative.

Hensel did not return Yahoo Shine’s calls for comment, however, according to Oregon local news affiliate KGW, trained staff will hand out the condoms after meeting with individual students. Parents are understandably divided on the issue.

“I really haven’t had time to process it, but I don’t know how I feel,” parent Alyson Farrens told the station. “Somebody talking to my children and giving them a condom, at that age, I don’t know.” However, mother Debbie Roberts said, “I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s better to be protected than get pregnant, so I think it’s a really good thing.”

Meanwhile, Oregon’s teen pregnancy rate is at a historic low, according to a May report issued by The Guttmacher Institute. The Gervais School District decision follows that of Chicago Public Schools, which, in March, announced that 24 high schools plan to make free condoms available to all its students. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that more than half of the district’s high school students are sexually active but only 64 percent say they use condoms.

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Regardless of public opinion, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has made its feelings on the issue clear: Condoms should be accessible to sexually active teens. “If you look at the number of new cases of sexually transmitted diseases in this country, 25 percent of them are in the adolescent population,” AAP spokesperson David Kaplan, MD recently told ABC News. “This is a major public health issue that needs to be addressed.” Studies show that making condoms available can only do good — according to the AAP, they don’t increase sexual activity and only reduce unintended pregnancy and STDs.

Source: Chicago Sun

 

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