The number of under-age girls in Britain receiving contraceptive implants and injections has nearly tripled over the last 10 years.
According to the latest figures from the country’s National Health Service (NHS), 8,400 girls aged 15 years and younger received such contraceptive treatments, a leap from 3,100 for the year 2004-2005. For the decade as a whole, figures record 58,700 girls under 16 years (the country’s age of consent) attending sexual health clinics for contraceptive purposes. In 2014, of the recorded 5,400 girls receiving contraceptive implants/jabs, 1,800 were aged 14 or under.
Campaigners against such widespread use of the contraceptive methods have criticised the growth in figures and cautioned that it sends a signal to young people that under-age sex is condoned.
The Department of Health has attempted to deal with this criticism by insisting that medical personnel offering contraceptive methods to younger girls must abide by a set of professional guidelines “to ensure that children are appropriately safeguarded”. The guidelines include encouraging children to speak with their parents before availing of an implant or injection, but this element is not mandatory for patients, and should a girl choose not to tell her parents, the physician involved in her case is bound by patient confidentiality.
Commenting in The Daily Mail newspaper on the continuing growth in implant and injection use for contraceptive purposes, Norman Wells of the Family Education Trust said it gave girls “a licence to engage in illegal sexual activity and to deny them the protection that the law on the age of consent is intended to give.
“Not only are these community contraceptive clinics condoning unlawful sexual activity and undermining parents, but they are also placing young teenagers at risk of sexually transmitted infections, emotional harm and abuse.”