Mona Davids, head of the NYC Parents Union has spoken out against Mayor Bloomberg’s birth control program for high schools in New York’s poorer neighborhoods. Increasingly, the school health centers are handing out the morning after pill to sexually active students. This year, 12,721 doses of Plan B have been handed out, as well as numerous other forms of birth control, including intrauterine devices. Says Ms. Davids, “I’m in shock. What gives the mayor the right to decide, without adequate notice, to give our children drugs that will impact their bodies and their psyches? He has purposely kept the public and parents in the dark with his agenda.”
NYC has spent 2.7 million dollars dispensing pills to the population which is least likely to use them as directed. 2117 Depo-Provera injections have been administered in 2012 alone to girls whose parents had inadequate or no notification. This drug is prominently associated with osteoporosis, particularly in teen users, because it blocks the usual bone deposition that occurs in those years of growth.
School officials refused to discuss this project with the New York Post, whose reporters found out through FOIA requests that Bloomberg’s birth control project is much larger than originally expected, expanding to 40 school based clinics.
Read more of Susan Edelman’s article at the N.Y. Post.
