In: Nursing
To combat teen pregnancy, some schools are going beyond sex education courses and dispensing contraception to their students. Is it ethical for junior and senior high schools to dispense contraception? Why or why not? What alternatives could schools provide rather than dispensing contraception?
Teenage pregnancy is defined as pregnancy in young women under
the age of 20. It is commonly due to the unprotected sex of teens,
which in turn, can result in STIs “…such as Chlamydia, Herpes, or
HIV” (“Relationships”). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
reports that there were 305,388 babies born to young girls ages
15-19 years old in 2012 (“Teen Pregnancy”). Due to the high rates
of teen pregnancy and the HIV infection, these issues have caused
many communities, including, public high schools to take action in
prevention efforts. The key component of school is to essentially
provide equal access to a proper education for all people. However,
public high schools have taken upon themselves to assist their
students to not only get a formal education but also become
educated about sex and the methods of safe sex in a classroom
setting. Schools even take it a step farther by distributing
contraceptives such as condoms and even birth control pills to
their students. While schools have the legal responsibility to
protect the well being of their students, including, providing
sexual education programs, parents should have the right to direct
the upbringing of their child and decide what is best for them
regarding their health.
According to Sexuality Information and Education Council of the
United States, sexual education programs in public schools was
created to “…provide young people with complete, accurate, and
age-appropriate sex education that helps them reduce their risk of
HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and
unintended pregnancy” (“Comprehensive”). States have required
public high schools to add sexual education to their curriculum to
help reduce sexual health risks among students. Guttmacher
Institute notes that in most states, sex education programs must
include information on: contraception, abstinence, importance of
sex only within marriage, sexual orientation and, negative outcomes
of teen sex (“Sex and HIV”). These concepts of sex education are
taught to inform and aware students about the decisions that they
make regarding sex, in addition to some programs, students have
access to receive contraceptives in their nurse’s office.
Spokeswoman Divya Mohan of the National Assembly of School-Based
Health Care reports that, “about 1,300 U.S. public schools with
adolescent students – less than 2 percent of the total – have
health centers staffed by a doctor or nurse practitioner who can
write prescriptions…about one in four of those provide condoms,
other contraceptives, prescriptions or referrals” (“Birth
Control”). Public schools have taken the initiative to decide what
is best for their students by distributing contraceptives and
adding sex education programs, while many parents are not being
asked to consent to the programs nor contraceptives that are
available to their child. The debate of schools distributing
contraceptives to minors, especially without the consent of the
parents is an ethical issue. Manuel Velasquez, Charles J. Dirksen
Professor of Business Ethics at the Santa Clara University, defines
ethics as “standards of behavior that tell us how human beings
ought to act in the many situations in which they find
themselves-as friends, parents, children, citizens, business
people, teachers, professionals, and so on” (“Ethical Decision
Making”). The ethical issue is mainly due to public high schools
taking action to include in their sexual education programs,
contraceptives like birth control, that may not be morally accepted
by parents. Essentially, the school has the responsibility to
protect the well being of their students, however, the parents have
the right to direct the upbringing of their children. Therefore, if
the school distributes contraceptives and students are accepting
contraceptives without the permission of the parent this causes an
ethical dilemma. In which the dilemma is between whether the parent
is obligated to give consent regarding their child’s health or if
minors are responsible enough to make their own decisions.
The ethical frameworks that relates to the ethical
dilemma of distributing contraceptives to minors are the common
good approach and the rights approach. The Common Good approach
considers all people as part of one community. We share “certain
general conditions that are… equally to everyone’s advantage
(Velasquez).” In order for the community to thrive, certain
conditions need to be sustained and protected so that the welfare
of all people in the community are stable. These certain conditions
can include: affordable health care, a just legal system, and
having good schools. In terms of the ethical issue, the public
schools’ intentions are pure and good. They believe that educating
their students and also providing the protection such as condoms,
if they did decide to have sex is always available for them. They
also believe that minors’ have the right to consent to their own
medical and health care situations without necessarily the consent
of the parent.
The Rights approach are rights that are morally “justified by moral standards that most people acknowledge, but which are not necessarily codified in law (Velasquez).” Some rights are be both positive and negative that are based on solely because we are humans. A negative right requires inaction while a positive right requires action. For example, we do not have the right to murder someone but we do have the right to life. In terms of the ethical issue, parents have the right to protect and make decisions for their child who is legally capable of doing so. Parents also have the right to direct the upbringing of their child. They have a right to decline contraceptives if they do not morally believe that that is the right decision for their child.