New York City’s Department of Education is launching a pilot program making the morning after pill available to high school aged girls. The CATCH (Connecting Adolescents To Comprehensive Health) program will make emergency accessible for girls as young as 14 without parental consent.

New York City’s public schools may be be the first in the nation to introduce such a program:

The National Association of School Nurses could cite no other school district supplying Plan B. So far, during an unpublicized pilot program in five city schools last year, 567 students received Plan B tablets and 580 students received Reclipsen birth-control pills, the city Department of Health told The Post. This fall, students can also get Depo-Provera, a birth-control drug injected once every three months, officials said. Oral and injectable contraceptives require prescriptions, which, in the CATCH program, are written by Health Department doctors

As quietly as the news of this program is being unveiled, this is pretty massive. The launch of the program is not met without some controversy. According to the DOE, parents have been notified of the new initiative and may opt out if they choose and reports a tiny percentage of parents opted of the new program. Still, I’m curious to learn more fallout from parents and teachers. As a local, and scanning the list of schools reported to be participants in the program, I can say that these are schools in black and latino working class areas, which may have a correlation with higher rates of teen pregnancy and dropout rates in those communities. Teen pregnancies disproportionately affects communities of color and is preventable with providing services and education to sexually active teens regardless of the fact that parents believe their teens are or not. NYC high schools have free condoms available to sexually active teens for some years now. EC and birth control seem to be a logical progression in being responsive to the reproductive health of young women.

Let’s think about this development in the context of Jos’s point about sex ed in high schools. New York City estimates 7,000 teen preganancies per year, 64% of which are terminated, 2,200 become mothers by age 17 that result in a 70% dropout rate. High for New York City, but possibly low in comparison to other communities with less dense populations as New York that promote abstinence only sex education. When we talk about teen pregnancy in the national context, I fail to hear from those who promote abstinence only discuss child care, support for the mothers, and you know, the long term economic prospects of teen parents. It ultimately switches to schizophrenic talk of faith, shaming and social darwinism.

I suppose that this policy places New York City at the vanguard of public health for teens. What do you think?