A school in Oregon is making headlines for recently deciding to offer condoms to students from the sixth grade onwards beginning this fall. The district said they were concerned by pregnancies in both the middle and high schools.
The plan by the rural Gervais School District comes after a 2013 survey by nursing students found that 7 percent of district high school girls had experienced pregnancy and 42 percent of students reported "never" or "sometimes" using protection.
“Over the past few decades, teen pregnancy in our community has remained somewhat constant, but higher than the board felt comfortable with,” Superintendent Rick Hensel said in a blog post dated Monday.
Small issue: the age of consent in Oregon is 18. Sixth graders are generally anywhere from 10-12 years old. They can't legally have sex. While Oregon does have a close-in-age exception, sexual contact with someone under the age of 12 is considered a Class A felony, and a 21 year old having sexual relations with a 17 year old is a misdemeanor.
Furthermore, if a student is too timid to buy a package of condoms at a Rite-Aid, what are the chances they'll be brave enough to ask the school nurse for one? This just seems like a bad policy at best, and at worst it's condoning and covering up statutory rape.