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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Trapped and torn
Locked in by a chain of protesters, I wanted to kick myself. My kids were at home and I was about to be pummeled for all the wrong reasons.
By Lisa Guide
[12/03/99]

Wild in the streets
What better place to find a hottie than at a riot conveniently taking place in my neighborhood?
By Annie Culver
[12/03/99]

Taking a chance on love
Suddenly, we would be allowed to adopt a baby -- if we could accept the very real possibility that, one day, he would be mentally ill.
By Jane Smith
[12/01/99]

Giving in to Ritalin
I hate it, but my son needs it.
By Karen Shoemaker
[11/30/99]

Till death do us part
Is it a promise of love or a life sentence? Our readers weigh in with advice.
By Jennifer Foote Sweeney and Amy Benfer
[11/29/99]

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Even the Pope has weighed in with his opposition to the decision by Education Minister Ségolène Royal, who also is the target of vehement protest by Federal Parent-Teacher Association (PEEP), which represents nearly 5,000 similar associations and half a million families.

Said PEEP in its most recent statement, "This decision is an admission of failure of all the preventive health and sex education measures to date ... We're concerned that the decision will result in a banalization of the pill by an even greater number of children."

"We are not talking about children here," retorts Natalie Marinier, associate director of a federally subsidized family planning center in Paris. "We're talking about sexually active young adolescents who already are engaged in, or about to explore, the world of sexual relations. We've been asking for more rigorous and widespread education for years. The fact that parents are dissenting reflects a serious lack of awareness about what adolescents confront on a daily basis."

Intimately familiar with what adolescents confront daily are the adolescents themselves, who appear to be unanimously in favor of NorLevo in schools. "I'm 100 percent behind it," says Pauline, a 17-year old economics student at the Universitè Nanterre. "The morning-after pill is already available in pharmacies. But a lot of girls don't know this, especially those who live outside of Paris. If the morning-after pill can prevent abortion, I'm all for it. And so is everyone I know."

In fact, both parents and teenagers are generally unaware of what NorLevo is and how it's been distributed. NorLevo is a non-abortive progesterone-based pill (not to be confused with the abortive RU-486 pill) that is only effective within 72 hours after sexual relations. It prevents the egg's implantation in the uterus.

In June of this year, France became the first country in the world to distribute NorLevo on the open market without prescription or parental consent. For the past seven months the pill has been available at pharmacies around the country for 60 francs ($10); it is also distributed free-of-charge along with other contraception at family planning centers.

"When NorLevo was launched on the open market without prescription, no one said a word," says Annie Filloux, member of the National Union of School Nurses and Health Counselors. "Suddenly the minister of education comes out in favor of its distribution by school nurses, and people are up in arms.

"Most young girls come to us in a state of deep distress. They've had unwanted sex, or something's gone wrong and they're panicked," adds Filloux. "For any number of reasons, they don't want to go to their parents. We have only 72 hours to help them, but often girls come to us after a weekend has gone by.

"We have very little time for any other options. We're there to help them in these cases of extreme emergency."

Extreme emergency covers a wide range of circumstances -- from adolescents who've had sex out of peer pressure or who've used a condom that has ruptured, to those who've been raped or sexually assaulted.

Until recently, rape was a silent crime in France, largely unreported in schools and shrouded in a complex blend of shame, outrage and denial. Often the first person to learn of a rape is not a parent or a police officer, but a school nurse.

The role of school nurses was put on the national agenda in 1990 during the first wave of massive school protests in France. Says Brigitte Le Chevert, secretary-general of the National Union of School Nurses and Health Counselors, "Everyone was shocked, including the prime minister, when the second student demand, often expressed in quasi-violent terms, was for more school nurses. People had no idea what our role was really all about."

That role involves an intimate and evolving interplay of technical health consultation, education and psychology. Says Le Chevert, "Students know that when they come to us with problems, they are protected. Except in cases of rape or sexual abuse, we are professionally bound to keep in confidence anything a student tells us.

"Students may come to see us for a seemingly banal problem. But frequently a headache or backache is, in fact, the reflection of much deeper emotional distress. It is frequently in the course of an ostensibly ordinary encounter that difficult memories or painful issues merge. And many adolescents, because of family barriers or culture, feel more comfortable speaking to us than to their parents."

Next page | "I've used the pill myself ... it saved my life"