Federal judge blocks Missouri law to deny birth control coverage

A federal judge on Friday blocked a new Missouri law that requires health insurers to offer plans that exclude contraception coverage if employers or individuals object to birth control on moral or religious grounds.
U.S. District Judge Audrey Fleissig granted a temporary restraining order preventing the enforcement of the law, writing that it appears to conflict with the new federal health care law.
Republican lawmakers in Missouri drafted the law in response to President Barack Obama's policy of requiring insurers to cover birth control for free as part of the new federal health care law, even if they work for a church or other employer that has a moral objection.
State lawmakers in September overrode a veto by Democratic Governor Jay Nixon to enact the law.
The Missouri Insurance Coalition, a nonprofit whose members include health insurers that do business in the state, asked the judge to block the state law, arguing that it conflicts with federal law and is therefore invalid.
Fleissig wrote that the coalition is likely to succeed on that claim "given what appears to be an irreconcilable conflict" between the federal and state laws.
At a hearing, the judge wrote, the Missouri Department of Insurance "could offer no response to how there would not be a direct conflict" between the federal and state laws if an insurer offered a health insurance plan "that acquiesced to an employer's decision not to offer contraceptive coverage."
She is expected to schedule a hearing on a preliminary injunction.

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Philadelphia to Install Free Condom Dispensers in High Schools

Philadelphia is installing condom dispensers in 22 city high schools where students as young as 14 will be able to receive condoms for free in an effort to combat an "epidemic" of sexually transmitted disease among the city's teenagers.

Students returning to school from Christmas break will find clear plastic dispensers filled with condoms in the offices of nurses whose schools have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases.

"We believe distributing condoms is part of our obligation to keep students healthy and to remain healthy," said school district spokesman Fernando Gallard. "The health department has described this as a continued epidemic of STDs among teenagers in Philadelphia."

Condoms have in the past been provided to students in Philadelphia as part of wider program in which the teenagers are provided "free, voluntary and confidential" testing for sexual diseases in their schools, Gallard said.

It was the results of those tests that led officials to launch the current program to distribute condoms regularly in schools instead of once a year when the tests are administered.

Of the 130,000 student who have received testing in the last five years, some 6,500 or 5 percent of them have tested positive for diseases including HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Parents were made aware of the distribution program in October and were given the chance to opt their children out of receiving the prophylactics.

Gallard said the school district has not received "specific calls" from parents objecting to the program. The total number of parents who chose to disallow their children from receiving condoms, however, is unknown.

According to Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit organization that advocates for sexual health among young people, there are at least 418 schools nationwide providing condoms.

In August, despite outrage from some parents, the school board in Springfield, Mass., approved a plan to distribute condoms in public high schools, as well as middle schools, providing free contraception to students as young as 11.

Philadelphia has plans to expand condom distribution to more schools, but has no plans to introduce prophylactics to middle schoolers, Gallard told ABCNews.com.

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Poor reading skills tied to risk of teen pregnancy

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Seventh grade girls who have trouble reading are more likely to get pregnant in high school than average or above-average readers, according to a new study from Philadelphia.
Researchers found that pattern stuck even after they took into account the girls' race and poverty in their neighborhoods - both of which are tied to teen pregnancy rates.
"We certainly know that social disadvantages definitely play a part in teen pregnancy risk, and certainly poor educational achievement is one of those factors," said Dr. Krishna Upadhya, a reproductive health and teen pregnancy researcher from Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore.
Poor academic skills may play into how teens see their future economic opportunities and influence the risks they take - even if those aren't conscious decisions, explained Upadhya, who wasn't involved in the new research.
Dr. Ian Bennett from the University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues looked up standardized test reading scores for 12,339 seventh grade girls from 92 different Philadelphia public schools and tracked them over the next six years.
During that period, 1,616 of the teenagers had a baby, including 201 that gave birth two or three times.
Hispanic and African American girls were more likely than white girls to get pregnant. But education appeared to play a role, as well.
Among girls who scored below average on their reading tests, 21 percent went on to have a baby as a teenager. That compared to 12 percent who had average scores and five percent of girls who scored above average on the standardized tests.
Once race and poverty were taken into consideration, girls with below-average reading skills were two and a half times more likely to have a baby than average-scoring girls, according to findings published in the journal Contraception.
Birth rates among girls ages 15 through 19 were at a record low in the U.S. in 2011 at 31 births for every 1,000 girls, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But that rate is still much higher in minority and poorer girls than in white, well-off ones, researchers noted.
And in general, it's significantly higher than teen birth rates in other wealthy nations.
Teen pregnancies are a concern because young moms and their babies have more health problems and pregnancy-related complications, and girls who get pregnant are at higher risk of dropping out of school.
Upadhya said the answer to preventing teen pregnancy in less-educated girls isn't simply to add more sex ed to the curriculum.
"This is really about adolescent health and development more broadly, so it's really important for us to make sure that kids are in schools and in quality educational programs and that they have opportunities to grow and develop academically and vocationally," she told Reuters Health.
"That is just as important in preventing teen pregnancy as making sure they know where to get condoms.

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