Parents are up in arms in the UK after discovering that school nurses have gone behind their backs and implanted girls with contraceptive jabs.
According to an article in the Telegraph, an estimated 7,400 girls under 15 were given contraceptives at family planning clinics without their parents' knowledge or consent. And with patient confidentiality legislation, nurses are within their rights to do so.
“Anything that trivialises or treats it as something mundane or easy, particularly for young people, is damaging their ability to grow up and to properly form a loving lasting relationship," said Anthony Seldon, headmaster at Wellington College. "It devalues sex, it makes it like an ordinary, everyday thing like going to have a McDonald’s.”
The implants, which inject hormones into the bloodstream and "prevent pregnancy for up to three years," were given in schools across various areas of England, including Bristol, Northumbria, Peterborough, Co Durham, the West Midlands and Berkshire.
Schoolgirls between 13 and 16 years old in Bristol, where teen pregnancy rates are among the highest in the country, are said to have received the injections as frequently as 430 occasions in the past two years as part of drop-in sexual health clinics.
Obviously many girls are too mortified to go to their parents requesting to be put on birth control. Teen pregnancy has a ripple effect on society at large. But should the health care system should administer contraception, or is this a case of patient confidentiality taken a step too far?
Your boobs will tingle a little when you hear about the mom who just broke the Guinness Book of World Records for donating the most breast milk ever—nearly 87 gallons of the white stuff.
Texas mom Alicia Richman had more milk than she needed when her son was born last March. According to an article in NY Daily News, she pumped all the time, "at work, on vacations, in the car."
Richman, who claimed she was 'blessed' with an abundance of milk, eventually ran out of room in her freezer. At which point she decided to donate some of her milky goodness to a nonprofit that helps nourish babies in intensive care units as well as those whose moms aren't able to nurse.
So from June 2011 to March of this year, Richman gave Mothers’ Milk Bank of North Texas around 11,115 ounces—or 86.8 gallons—of her elixir. Her bounty broke the current record of “Most Breast Milk Donated” by a whopping 23 gallons.
“Alicia’s generous gift of human milk has fed hundreds, and more likely, thousands of premature babies across the United States,” said Amy Vickers, executive director of the Mothers’ Milk Bank.
In fact, it reportedly takes a mere three ounces of milk "to feed a premature infant nine times."
But Richman is an ambitious one. Not content to stop at this, she aims to break her own record with the birth of her second child.
Given the much-publicized benefits of breast milk, it seems like a crime to dump the stuff away when it's so precious. I wish milk banks had been around when I had my son! If you happen to live in BC, you can check out this one.
Kudos to Richman for sharing her wealth... Would you donate your breast milk?
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