Missing Birth Control Pills

Lack of sex education, difficult access to birth control pills, the case is that the number of abortions performed on minors has been increasing in France, revealed last March, a report of the Forum on the Right to Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy chaired by Professor Israël Nisand. According to data from the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM, according to French acronym), the voluntary interruption of pregnancy by teenagers continues to rise in the country.

For the sociologist Nathalie Bajos, INSERM, this is little paradoxical, because the country is no shortage of information about sex and contraception. How to solve the problem of public health? The local government of the Ile-de-France, encompassing Paris and its surrounding seven departments, presented on Tuesday its healthy contraception pass program, a device that will allow to 159,000 high school students and vocational schools access freely and anonymously to a range of contraceptive measures that also includes medical tests and doctor visits.

In the Multipurpose High School Elisa Lemonnier twelfth arrondissement of Paris, the regional chairman, Jean-Paul Huchon, and the Minister of Education, Luc Chatel, joined forces this morning to explain the procedure to follow. Apparently, the school nurses in each given to young people about coupons that are redeemable for medical services and contraceptives and will be valid for between three and six months.

This campaign is primarily aimed at students in the fourth of the ESO or similar level, aged about 16 years. According to the regional council said on its website, "the average age of first sexual experience in the region is 17 years."

The latest statistics on teenage abortions performed nationwide in 2006 had a balance of 13,200 outages underage pregnancy in one year. In 2002, was 10,722, ie a growth of 23.11% in just four years. And experts say the number could continue to increase exponentially. For the gynecologist Israël Nisand, the actual number could be around 15,000 cases.