COMMENTARY: NYC Schools Are Wrong in Distributing Morning-After Pills to Students

New York City public schools this month began handing out the morning-after pill to girls as young as 14 under a birth control initiative called CATCH (Connecting Adolescents To Comprehensive Health).

The schools and the girls are not required to tell parents they are taking the morning-after pill, unless parents previously opted out of the program.

The morning-after pill is being distributed to the young girls in order to reduce a plethora of teenage pregnancies. The New York City school system is the only one in the United States to provide its students with morning-after pills.

We believe that the New York City school system is sending a wrong message and has overstepped its bounds in providing this free and secretive service to teenage girls. The fact is that such a service encourages girls to have sexual relations with boys, because the girls know that they can receive the morning-after pill to prevent them from becoming pregnant.

Moreover, it is inappropriate and unethical for schools to distribute these pills to girls -- and doing so without informing the girls' parents -- since such action clearly usurps the authority of the parents in this personal familial domain.

The primary purpose of the American public school is to instill learning and promote thinking in its students. A school was never meant to be be a clearinghouse of birth control supplies for its students, or an institution designed to prevent its girls from becoming pregnant.

Perhaps a court case is in order by a parent of a student opposed to New York City's "right" to secretly distribute morning-after pills to its students. Indeed, the courts may rule that a public school has no business whatsoever to distribute such pills to its students.