How Early Is Too Early For Birth Control

Safety Medicine? More, Younger Girls Starting On Nascency Control

More and more girls are starting on the birth command pill at a younger age.

July 22, 2011 -- Pat Fatemi says at that place is not a moment of the day that she isn't worrying about her 13-yr-erstwhile daughter, Daria.

She's concerned nearly everything, from the activities she's involved in to the pressures she faces from her middle schoolhouse classmates.

"The kids are only then far advanced, talking almost sex," the Tuxedo, N.Y., mom told "Good Morning America." "It's actually, really scary."

Those fears prompted Fatemi to make a doctor's engagement.

Not a pediatrician for her young daughter, or even a psychologist to address her own fears, simply an appointment with a gynecologist to discuss putting her daughter on the nascence control pill.

"No affair how much I tell her and talk to her, she doesn't know what going to happen when she's with a male child and it all happens too fast," Fatemi told "GMA." "And then I'd desire to go her on the birth command pill as before long as possible."

Fatemi is non alone in thinking that birth control is appropriate for girls her daughter's age.

The number of teenage girls on the nascence control pill has jumped 50 per centum in the past decade in the U.Southward. solitary, according to a study released this March by Thomson Reuters.

Today, one in five American girls betwixt the ages of thirteen and 18, two-and-a-half 1000000 teens in all, are on the birth command, the study found, and doctors say the historic period at which teens start on the pill is getting younger and younger.

"We have put people on the pill who are as immature as 12," Dr. Mary Rosser, a gynecologist in Larchmont, N.Y., who treats adolescents told "GMA."

Rosser attributes the growth of nativity command employ among teens to the increasingly young age at which girls brainstorm to menstruate, some equally immature every bit age 10, and the rising number of sexually active teens.

"Almost one-half of teenagers ages 15 to 19 report they have had sexual intercourse at to the lowest degree one time," Rosser said.

Rosser says most parents come to doctors, seeking birth control prescriptions for their daughters, in order to treat their teens' acne, regulate menstrual periods, and to prevent teen pregnancy.

"I think it's okay to have their teenager on the pill if they are ready to go on it and they inquire for it," Rosser told "GMA" of the approach she takes with her own patients. "I call up information technology'southward safer than having a teen pregnancy."

While Rosser takes a proactive arroyo towards birth control for teens, the ascent popularity of the drug does not come without controversy.

The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology asserts the pill is safe, just acknowledges information technology is associated with a heightened risk for blood clots.

Several studies in recent years take besides suggested a possible link between the pill and chest cancer, with organizations similar the World Health Organization even calling the pill a carcinogenic.

"I've constitute that some women who've been on birth control pills for a while have trouble conceiving," Dr. Erika Schultz, a New York Metropolis-based internist who specializes in women and hormone issues, said to "GMA."

Schultz said she believes the pill tin practise more harm than good, and worries that doctors are overprescribing the pill to a generation of teens seduced by sleeky ads put along past an oral contraceptive manufacture that generates sales of $4 billion per year.

"I see a lot of women who bring me their daughters with symptoms of fibromyalgia, mood swings, depression or weight gain that disappear when the birth control pills are removed," she said.

Rosser reports at that place is growing talk in the gynecological community of offering more contraceptive options for teens, such equally IUDs, which provide a prophylactic, effective, non-hormonal alternative, merely the devices are not nevertheless being offered to the greater population of teenagers.

The divided opinions consort by the medical customs, and the limited options, have left mothers of teenagers with a dilemma: practice they expose their teenage, or younger, daughters to the pill in hopes of preventing pregnancy, or wait until they are 18 or older to let them brand the decision?

Weighing Medical Risks Against Pregnancy

"That's all I think almost 24 hours a day," Fatemi said of balancing medical concerns for her thirteen-year-old daughter, Daria, with worries for her time to come. "That she will be everything she wants to be without interference of pregnancy or babies or anything."

"Good Morning America" posed the hot topic question faced by Fatemi so many other moms to a console of six mothers of teenage girls in the greater New York area. Some mothers have children on the pill; some do not.

All agreed it is a complicated matter.

"I would much rather have her on birth command if I fifty-fifty felt that she might exist sexually active or presently," Alicia Penny said. "I would put her on birth control immediately rather than have to deal with an unwanted pregnancy."

While the majority of moms on the panel agreed with Penny that it is okay for teenagers like their own daughters to be on nascence control, all agreed it is, without doubt, a complicated matter.

"It'south hard for me because I have a value system that we've tried to promote abstinence," said Esther Goetz, the mother of a teenage girl. "I'm kind of on the contrary end of the spectrum if I knew they were sexually active."

Every bit for the outcome of whether putting their daughters on the pill would seem to place the girls nether increased pressure to have sex, or requite them unspoken permission to be sexually active --an argument often raised past birth control opponents--the moms acknowledged girls on the pill may be more probable to say 'yep' to sex activity.

"The answer is probably," Helen Jonsen said of whether teen girls may feel more pressure level to say yes to sex if their boyfriends know they are taking nascence control. Jonsen says she has daughters who are currently on the pill.

Nonetheless, Jonsen was like other moms on the panels whose daughters are currently on the pill, who said they treat the pill but similar any other medication or daily personal habit.

Jonsen says she lays the pills out for her daughters, alongside their vitamins in the morning.

"Information technology would be like 'Did y'all brush your teeth before you left the business firm?'" mom Ofelia Almedina told "GMA." "Did you castor your teeth earlier bed, did yous accept your pill?"

The teenage girls we spoke with, a panel of six xiv- to 19-year-olds besides in the New York area, agreed that the utilize of birth control today amongst their friends is more frequent than rare, driven largely by the fear of getting pregnant.

"Definitely," one teen replied when asked if pregnancy is a top fear among her friends. "I think being significant, first of all, and so not having the person that got you pregnant to be by your side and supporting y'all."

The teens said the pressure level to non get meaning is but one more than responsibility they have come to accept, along with the responsibleness to non catch a sexually transmitted disease.

"I think most teenagers know that you demand to use a condom if y'all want to forestall any STDs," said one.

"I know a few girls who sometimes they don't tell their boyfriends that they're on the pill just and so that they'll use a safety with it," said some other.

Even with the growing credence amid moms of teens using birth control, the teens themselves nevertheless want the decision to remain their own.

"I think it's a skillful affair if the girl'southward parents are part of the decision to go along the pill," said one. "But I don't think the girl should be put on the pill. I think she should have a say in the matter."

Click hither to return to the "Good Morn America" website.