Condoms
By Alexandra Brodsky • @azbrodsky • 11 years ago

Surprise! Teen pregnancy rates drop in New York City thanks to birth control in schools

CondomsNew York City’s teen pregnancy rate has decreased by 27% over the past decade. And Health Commissioner Tom Farley attributes the change, in part, to the provision of contraceptives in public schools.

The New York Daily New writes:

The city has worked to make it easier for kids to get birth control — giving out condoms at schools and making birth control and the morning-after pill available in some school clinics, a sometimes controversial move.

Farley said the numbers show that strategy is working.

“It shows that when you make condoms and contraception available to teens, they don’t increase their likelihood of being sexually active. But they get the message that sex is risky,” he said.

Despite all sorts of hand-wringing that OMG CONDOMS IN CLASS WILL FORCE ALL STUDENTS TO START FORNICATING THEIR WAY TO HELL IMMEDIATELY, data indicates that contraceptive access doesn’t result in more sex, just safer sex. (Why more sex is so “obviously” undesirable is a whole other question.)

You can read the full article here.

Washington, DC

Alexandra Brodsky was a senior editor at Feministing.com. During her four years at the site, she wrote about gender violence, reproductive justice, and education equity and ran the site's book review column. She is now a Skadden Fellow at the National Women's Law Center and also serves as the Board Chair of Know Your IX, a national student-led movement to end gender violence, which she co-founded and previously co-directed. Alexandra has written for publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Guardian, and the Nation, and she is the co-editor of The Feminist Utopia Project: 57 Visions of a Wildly Better Future. She has spoken about violence against women and reproductive justice at campuses across the country and on MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, ESPN, and NPR.

Alexandra Brodsky was a senior editor at Feministing.com.

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