Girls text for morning-after pill

12 April 2012

Schoolgirls will be able to request the morning-after pill by text message in a scheme being introduced later this year.

Six Oxfordshire schools are to take part in the project after a rise in the number of teenage pregnancies in the county.

Any girl at the four schools in Oxford and two in Banbury will be given the opportunity to ask for emergency contraception if they have had unprotected sex, or their contraception has failed.

Child protection staff will step in if any girl aged between 11 and 13 uses the service.

The text message service will be introduced in July by Oxfordshire County Council and the Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust, which have refused to name the schools involved.

Hilary Pannack, chief executive of teenage pregnancy charity Straight Talking, welcomed the move.

She said: "I think it's an excellent idea. But there needs to be more in place - there needs to be good quality sex and relationship education as well.

"Some girls won't want to talk to people face to face, and the process of getting the emergency contraceptive pill should be made easy for them. It's not going to cause promiscuity.

"If it means them not going through the trauma of abortion, then it's valuable."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in