Akkari, Hamed: Teens and Contraception

Contraception, especially for teenagers, is a serious issue that must be discussed within the family in order to avoid misperceptions and blind assumptions about basic facts as soon as a teenager starts being sexually active. Studies point out that 42% of adolescents between the ages of 15 to 19 have engaged in sexual intercourse. Furthermore, unexpected pregnancies among teenagers have reached a high level in the U.S mainly due to the use of ineffective methods of contraception such as pills or condoms. Both of the articles, IUDs, Implants Best Teen Birth Control, ACOG Say, and Parents Prefer Some, Often Less-Effective, Birth Control Methods for Teens urge adolescents to use long term contraceptive for their better effectiveness.

According to a study in the Journal of Adolescent Health, parents are not willing to accept their daughter being offered long acting contraceptive methods and are more likely to accept short-term contraceptive methods. The study also affirms that the reason for such a choice is that parents might associate long acting contraception, such as IUDs, which has been proven to have a pregnancy rate of less than 1%, with an ongoing sexual relationship. In other words, parents are not comfortable with the possibility of their children having an ongoing but well protected sexual relationship through IUDs. Yet, they are indirectly accepting such a lifestyle with less effective contraceptive methods, which increases the risks of sexually transmitted diseases and an unwanted pregnancy.

Indeed it is an infringement of teenagers’ rights to interfere in their autonomy, but parents need at least to communicate to their children information about the different types of contraceptive methods and about the consequences which arise from the use of the short term ones. Bankhead stated that more than 80% of teen pregnancies are unintended, reflecting high rates of non-use, inconsistent use, and use of failure-prone contraceptive methods. Short lasting contraceptive which are considered less effective than IUDs, are in high demand by teenagers. The reason for that is mainly because they don’t require permanent use, and they are easily accessible unlike implants and intrauterine devices which are costly and hard to obtain.

            In order to enforce the use of contraceptive implants and intrauterine devices among teenagers nowadays, these methods should be easily accessible. And, along with these methods, condoms should consistently be used to protect against STDs, according to Bankhead.