GPs, schoolgirls and sex. A cross cultural background comparison of general practitioner attitudes towards contraceptive service provision for young adolescent females in Scotland
Sengupta, S.; Smith, B.H.
British Journal of Family Planning 24(2): 39-42
1998
ISSN/ISBN: 0144-8625 PMID: 9719710 Document Number: 276634
In the UK, women must be at least 16 years old to give their legal consent to have sexual intercourse with a man. However, despite the legal proscriptions against women under age 16 legally having sex with men, women in that age group in England and Wales had 24,844 conceptions during 1989-91, a rate of 9.6/1000 females aged 13-15 years, and the highest level since statistics began being recorded in 1969. Approximately half of these pregnancies to young teenage women ended in abortion. The pregnancy rate in 1993 among under-16-year-olds in Scotland was 8.7/1000. 206 male and 24 female unrestricted principal general practitioners (GPs) across Scotland were sent a self-completion postal survey in a study to identify the differences between general practitioners trained in the UK and those trained on the Indian subcontinent in relation to the provision of contraceptive services to women under age 16 years. Half of the sample was comprised of GPs working in Scotland who had been trained in India, while the other GPs had been trained in the UK. 131 of the GPs responded, 29% of those trained in India and 85% of those trained in the UK. While 128 were willing to provide contraceptive advice, only 104 would provide contraceptive treatment. GPs trained in India were significantly less likely to provide contraceptive services to women under age 16 years. A larger study should be conducted to obtain more conclusive evidence.