Teen contraception 'not compulsory'
Updated on 16 November 2008
Teenage girls will not be "forced" into having the contraceptive injection, the Department of Health said.
Responding to reports that girls as young as 13 will be made to take long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), a spokeswoman insisted the government's primary concern was only to ensure young people had access to effective birth control.
Following a Freedom of Information (FoI) request by the Sunday Telegraph, it emerged that a number of local authorities had received letters from the government encouraging them to get teenage girls to have the injections or implants.
Local authorities with particularly high rates of teenage pregnancy, including Bristol, Manchester and Nottingham, were told it was "essential" to increase the uptake of LARC amongst young girls.
A statement from the Department of Health said: "Thirteen-year-old girls will not be forced to have a contraceptive injection.
"The vast majority of 13-year-olds are not sexually active.
"Our teenage pregnancy strategy is about providing effective sex and relationships education to ensure young people have the skills to delay sex until they are ready, for parents to talk to their children about sex and relationships and access to effective contraception methods for those that are sexually active."
LARC includes many types of injections and implants, which can be fitted to make women infertile for varying amounts of time. With the exception of the injection, a woman's infertility returns straight away once removed.
However critics have warned of concerns that using them increases teenagers' risk of spreading sexually transmitted diseases, which they did not protect against, and also that they can effect bone growth. The rate of teenage pregnancies in Britain has fallen from the peak years of the late 1990s, but it is still the highest in Western Europe and the second highest, after the US, in the world.
In 2005, there were 39,804 conceptions by under-18s in England - a rate of 41.3 per thousand.
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