what is the youngest age to get birth control?
Safe Medicine? More, Younger Girls Starting On Nativity Control
More than and more girls are starting on the nascency control pill at a younger historic period.
July 22, 2011 -- Pat Fatemi says there is not a moment of the day that she isn't worrying about her 13-year-old daughter, Daria.
She's concerned about everything, from the activities she'southward involved in to the pressures she faces from her centre school classmates.
"The kids are but then far avant-garde, talking virtually sex," the Tuxedo, N.Y., mom told "Good Morning America." "It'south really, actually scary."
Those fears prompted Fatemi to make a doctor's appointment.
Not a pediatrician for her young daughter, or fifty-fifty a psychologist to accost her own fears, merely an appointment with a gynecologist to discuss putting her daughter on the birth control pill.
"No thing how much I tell her and talk to her, she doesn't know what going to happen when she's with a boy and it all happens too fast," Fatemi told "GMA." "So I'd desire to get her on the birth command pill as soon as possible."
Fatemi is not lone in thinking that nascency control is advisable for girls her daughter's age.
The number of teenage girls on the birth control pill has jumped l percent in the by decade in the U.Southward. alone, according to a report released this March by Thomson Reuters.
Today, one in five American girls between the ages of 13 and 18, two-and-a-half meg teens in all, are on the birth control, the study found, and doctors say the age at which teens outset on the pill is getting younger and younger.
"Nosotros accept put people on the pill who are as immature as 12," Dr. Mary Rosser, a gynecologist in Larchmont, N.Y., who treats adolescents told "GMA."
Rosser attributes the growth of nascency control use amid teens to the increasingly young historic period at which girls brainstorm to menstruate, some as young equally age 10, and the rising number of sexually agile teens.
"Nearly one-half of teenagers ages xv to 19 report they have had sexual intercourse at least once," Rosser said.
Rosser says about parents come to doctors, seeking nativity control prescriptions for their daughters, in gild to treat their teens' acne, regulate menstrual periods, and to prevent teen pregnancy.
"I think it'south okay to take their teenager on the pill if they are ready to keep it and they ask for it," Rosser told "GMA" of the approach she takes with her ain patients. "I think it'southward safer than having a teen pregnancy."
While Rosser takes a proactive approach towards birth command for teens, the rising popularity of the drug does not come up without controversy.
The American Higher of Obstetrics and Gynecology asserts the pill is safety, only acknowledges it is associated with a heightened risk for claret clots.
Several studies in recent years take also suggested a possible link between the pill and chest cancer, with organizations like the Globe Wellness Organisation even calling the pill a carcinogenic.
"I've found that some women who've been on birth control pills for a while have problem conceiving," Dr. Erika Schultz, a New York City-based internist who specializes in women and hormone problems, said to "GMA."
Schultz said she believes the pill can do more damage than skilful, and worries that doctors are overprescribing the pill to a generation of teens seduced by glossy ads put forth by an oral contraceptive industry that generates sales of $4 billion per year.
"I see a lot of women who bring me their daughters with symptoms of fibromyalgia, mood swings, depression or weight gain that disappear when the nascence control pills are removed," she said.
Rosser reports there is growing talk in the gynecological community of offering more contraceptive options for teens, such equally IUDs, which provide a safe, effective, not-hormonal culling, but the devices are not yet beingness offered to the greater population of teenagers.
The divided opinions espoused past the medical community, and the limited options, have left mothers of teenagers with a dilemma: do they expose their teenage, or younger, daughters to the pill in hopes of preventing pregnancy, or wait until they are 18 or older to let them make the decision?
Weighing Medical Risks Confronting Pregnancy
"That'southward all I recollect about 24 hours a day," Fatemi said of balancing medical concerns for her 13-year-old daughter, Daria, with worries for her future. "That she will exist everything she wants to be without interference of pregnancy or babies or annihilation."
"Good Morning America" posed the hot topic question faced past Fatemi and and then many other moms to a panel of six mothers of teenage girls in the greater New York expanse. Some mothers have children on the pill; some practise not.
All agreed information technology is a complicated matter.
"I would much rather take her on birth control if I even felt that she might be sexually active or soon," Alicia Penny said. "I would put her on birth control immediately rather than take to deal with an unwanted pregnancy."
While the majority of moms on the panel agreed with Penny that it is okay for teenagers similar their own daughters to be on nativity command, all agreed it is, without doubt, a complicated matter.
"It's hard for me because I have a value arrangement that nosotros've tried to promote abstinence," said Esther Goetz, the mother of a teenage girl. "I'm kind of on the opposite finish of the spectrum if I knew they were sexually active."
Equally for the issue of whether putting their daughters on the pill would seem to place the girls under increased pressure to have sexual activity, or give them unspoken permission to exist sexually active --an statement frequently raised by birth control opponents--the moms acknowledged girls on the pill may be more likely to say 'yes' to sex.
"The answer is probably," Helen Jonsen said of whether teen girls may experience more pressure to say yes to sex if their boyfriends know they are taking nascence control. Jonsen says she has daughters who are currently on the pill.
Still, Jonsen was like other moms on the panels whose daughters are currently on the pill, who said they treat the pill but like whatsoever other medication or daily personal habit.
Jonsen says she lays the pills out for her daughters, alongside their vitamins in the morning.
"It would be like 'Did yous brush your teeth before y'all left the house?'" mom Ofelia Almedina told "GMA." "Did you brush your teeth before bed, did yous accept your pill?"
The teenage girls we spoke with, a panel of 6 fourteen- to 19-year-olds too in the New York expanse, agreed that the use of nascence command today among their friends is more frequent than rare, driven largely past the fear of getting meaning.
"Definitely," one teen replied when asked if pregnancy is a top fear among her friends. "I think existence pregnant, kickoff of all, and so not having the person that got you pregnant to exist by your side and supporting you."
The teens said the pressure to not get meaning is just ane more responsibleness they take come to have, forth with the responsibility to non catch a sexually transmitted disease.
"I think most teenagers know that y'all need to use a condom if you want to prevent any STDs," said one.
"I know a few girls who sometimes they don't tell their boyfriends that they're on the pill only then that they'll use a condom with it," said another.
Fifty-fifty with the growing acceptance amidst moms of teens using nascence command, the teens themselves still desire the decision to remain their ain.
"I think it'due south a expert affair if the girl's parents are part of the determination to continue the pill," said ane. "But I don't remember the girl should be put on the pill. I think she should have a say in the matter."
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Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/safe-medicine-younger-girls-starting-birth-control/story?id=14116032
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