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Frightening!

Anon | 17.11.2008 12:21 | Health

More info on the scary tactics of this Government or should I say dictatorship.

DoH saidTeenage girls will not be "forced" into having the contraceptive injection, the Department of Health said.
Responding to reports that girls as young as 13 will be made to take long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), a spokeswoman insisted the government's primary concern was only to ensure young people had access to effective birth control.
Following a Freedom of Information (FoI) request by the Sunday Telegraph, it emerged that a number of local authorities had received letters from the government encouraging them to get teenage girls to have the injections or implants.
Local authorities with particularly high rates of teenage pregnancy, including Bristol, Manchester and Nottingham, were told it was "essential" to increase the uptake of LARC amongst young girls.

Anon

Comments

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side-effects

17.11.2008 15:50

Those being given such hormone injections/implants for contraception are often not properly warned about the side effects, which can include depression.

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Side effects

17.11.2008 20:42

Not intended to be pro or con.

There are indeed side effects possible with LARC as with any other drug/medical treatment. But that's an argument against if and only if compared against no side effects without the LARC. Since there are rather significant levels of side effects associated with pregnancy, in order for the side effects of LARC to be an argument against its use, you'd have to claim that these were more likely and/or more severe than the side effects of the pregnancies which would occur in the absence of LARC.

You gave the risk of "depression". Even using this single side effect, are you suggesting that the number of cases of depression resulting from the use of LARC would be greater than the number of depression caused by getting pregnant while a young teen?

BTW --- that can indeed be the case where a rare condition is being prevented. Then even a rather low rate of side effects in the large otherwise healthy population can result in greater harm than caused by the rare condition being prevented. But that is scarcely going to be the situation here (pregnancies among young teens is unfortunately all too common).

MDN