Norplant joins war on teen pregnancy - Baltimore, Maryland schools to offer long-term birth control implant - Cover Story

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 8, 1993 | by Gayle Hanson

The results of Zabin's studies of ambivalence are now leading her down a different path. Her current research involves studying young people waiting for the results of pregnancy tests to find out what proportion of them have a negative test before coming back with a positive test.

Zabin hopes that there can be intervention with young women who have tested negative. "This seems like an ideal time to intervene" she says. "What you have in the case of kids who come in for tests is a well-defined group that is already at risk. Just by being there they are telling you they are sexually active, and hopefully they can be reached without a lot of political flak. One of the biggest problems in the field of public health is that people who are at very high risk are usually difficult to reach. In this case we are talking about a group that is high risk but accessible."

Jacqueline Hamm has been in charge of Sinai Hospital of Baltimore's Norplant program since its inception a year ago. She is also a member of the citywide Norplant Consortium begun by Beilenson. She estimates that more than 100 women have had the implant inserted since it was introduced at Sinai.

"What we have here is a situation where there has been a lot of misinformation around about the implant. And what we are trying to do is provide a good solid education for women who come here seeking it," she says. "All of us involved in the issue of teen pregnancy agree that abstinence is the first choice. But we also know that there are a lot of young women out there who are sexually active and we need to keep them from having an unwanted pregnancy.

"A couple of weeks ago I had a 12-year-old come in with her mother. Now, often these moms are really upset to find out that their daughters have become sexually active. Bu I felt good that the daughter spoke to her mother and that the two of them came in to see me. Now, there is no way that if someone comes here and wants Norplant that I'm just going to give it to them.

"We have to do a screening"' adds Hamm, "provide them with counseling and make sure that it is the right decision for them. So far we've been lucky in that we've had parental involvement with each of our young teens who've come in. But the law in Maryland is that they don't have to have parental permission."

The 12-year-old ultimately received the implant.

Some public health officials across the country fear increased use of Norplant will mean less use of condoms, and hence increases in AIDS and other venereal diseases. Hamm disagrees, confident that "because of the amount of counseling that a patient undergoes before getting Norplant, we may end up seeing an increase in condom usage."

But the device certainly isn't for everybody, she concedes. In the past year, she says, a handful of the women who received the device at Sinai have come in to have it removed.

"Some women will call and want to have it removed and then change their minds," says Hamm. "I had a situation recently where I had a 15-year-old [come in] who already had one child. And she wanted to have [the implant] removed because she said that she wanted to have another baby.