Mandatory reporting of all sexually active under-13s: Confidential sexual health services to young people: part of the solution or part of the problem?

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7524.1083

BMJ 2005;331:1083 (5 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7524.1083

Letter

Mandatory reporting of all sexually active under-13s

Confidential sexual health services to young people: part of the solution or part of the problem?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Bastable and Sheather offer little evidence asto what would happen if limits were placed on confidential underageaccess to sexual health services.¹ They mention the United Stateswithout mentioning the relevant empirical data there, as forexample summarised by the economist Levine in a recent analysisof US and international data on abortion.² Levine finds thatparental involvement laws actually reduce abortion rates ofminors by 10-20%. More importantly, there is no evidence ofa concomitant increase in the rate of underage births. Teenagepregnancies either remained unchanged or even fell.

Levine et al find that US states restricting Medicaid fundingfor abortion during 1977-88 led to a decrease in their pregnancyrates of 7.7%.³ This too implies that increasing access to abortionincreases the incidence of unprotected sex.

Another "social experiment" that contradicts the assumptionsby Bastable and Sheather occurred at the time of the Gillick. . . [Full text of this article]

Hans-Christian Raabe, fellow, environmental health clinic

Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 1B2 hcraabe@yahoo.com

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