Bonuses for GPs to encourage 'long term contraception'

Briefing: some of these methods of course are abortifacient; all of them are have health risks attached. But who cares about the health of young girls if their babies can be killed before they become a burden on the state?

From SPUC: Family doctors in Britain will be paid extra for getting teenage girls to use long-term hormonal birth control such as injections, implants and coils. The girls' parents will not routinely be told. From next year, the physicians will be rewarded for recommending the methods when they prescribe morning-after pills. The government says young people neglect to use other types of birth control. The General Medical Council allows doctors to provide such devices and substances to minors without parental knowledge. Family and Youth Concern said the move was: "tantamount to bribing doctors to facilitate underage sex." Our source mentions unpleasant side-effects of long-term birth control. [Mail, 13 February] SPUC's national director said: "This has a faint echo of the global financial crisis, in which the senior management of failed banks are still being paid bonuses despite their complicity in the crisis. The government's teenage pregnancy strategy and its accompanying provision of more contraception and so-called sexual health services is an abject, manifest failure." He urges supporters in England and Wales to organise public meetings on the matter. [John Smeaton, 13 February]