Study: Girls avoid family planning clinics if parents told

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (CNN) -- Sexually active girls under 18 are less likely to seek out sexual health-care services if their parents are going to be told when they try to get birth control pills or contraceptive devices, a new study suggests.

The University of Wisconsin study, published in the August 14 edition of the "Journal of the American Medical Association", polled 950 sexually active girls in Wisconsin who received sexual health care at 33 Planned Parenthood clinics in 1999.

Planned Parenthood reacted positively to the study. "This independent study, just released and published in JAMA, supports Planned Parenthood's long-held assertion that draconian parental notification laws endanger the health of young women," said a written statement by Dr. Vanessa Cullins, Planned Parenthood's vice president for medical affairs.

Fifty-nine percent of the girls said they would "stop using all sexual health-care services, delay testing or treatment for HIV or other STDs [sexually transmitted diseases], or discontinue use of specific (but not all) sexual health-care services if their parents" were notified they were trying to get prescribed contraceptives, the study found.

Separate data collected in 2001 were mentioned in the same study. In that additional group, 230 sexually active girls younger than 18 who visited three Planned Parenthood family planning clinics in Milwaukee were also asked to complete the confidential survey. Results were "virtually identical" to the findings of the statewide study.

But most of those Milwaukee respondents who would stop using sexual health-care services if their parents were told said they would continue having sex nevertheless.

"We investigated what girls would do and the majority of girls who would stop using services with parental notification," said Diane M. Reddy, a co-author of the study. "99 percent of them said they would remain sexually active."

The study comes as the U.S. House of Representatives considers a bill that would require states that receive federal health care funds to legislate mandatory parental "consent or notification" for minors who buy "prescription drugs or devices."

Congress has attempted to pass bills requiring mandatory parental notification for minors' sexual health-care services before, including a 1997 amendment to the 1998 federal budget that was killed at the last minute and a bill that Congress passed during the Reagan administration that was struck down by a U.S. District Court as unconstitutional.

During the past five years, at least 10 states have attempted to mandate parental notification for girls requesting access to prescribed contraceptives, according to the study. Twenty-four states currently have such notification and consent laws.

The medical community has taken a firm stand against notification laws. In 1988, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the National Medical Association announced that they would not support mandatory parental notification laws, according to the study.

"...Ultimately, the health risks to adolescents are so impelling that legal barriers in deference to parental involvement should not stand in the way of needed care," the groups said.